WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump is reeling on the eve of his first televised debate against challenger Joe Biden after a report showed he has been avoiding paying almost any federal income tax for years.
The report disclosed that Trump paid only $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and 2017, and none at all for 10 of the previous 15 years, delivering a blow to the self-proclaimed billionaire businessman. Trump dismissed the report which the newspaper said is based on examination of his long-secret tax returns.
“The Fake News Media, just like Election time 2016, is bringing up my Taxes & all sorts of other nonsense with illegally obtained information,” he tweeted on Monday.
With several new polls once again suggest Biden has the upper hand, Trump goes into the debate in Cleveland on Tuesday ever more on the defensive.
Trump’s Democratic challenger will criticise on the president’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his controversial rush to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the late liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The tax report threatens the core of Trump’s political identity and although its impact on voters was still unclear, the report hands Biden piles of new ammunition.
The Democrat’s campaign immediately opened fire with an ad comparing typical income tax payments by ordinary Americans, such as $10,216 for nurses, to that reportedly $750 paid by Trump the year he took office.
Trump is the first president in years not to make his tax returns public claiming he cannot because he is under audit. In his trademark style, he also once boasted that getting out of taxes “makes me smart.”
On Monday, he tweeted: “I paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits.”
According to the report, Trump’s tax returns show he managed large-scale tax avoidance partly because his supposedly successful businesses particularly the golf courses lose money.
The report said that Trump benefited from a $72.9 million tax refund now subject to an official audit. He also reportedly took tax deductions on residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television appearances.
The report also said that loans and debts of $421 million personally guaranteed by Trump are largely due for repayment in what would be his second term raising questions of conflict of interest.
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