Donald Trump, Supergenius, is the master of the American tax system. A massive, embarrassing business loss followed with exploitation of a whopping loophole is a Good Thing for Trump. Because it proves that he’s hella-smarter than you losers who pay for the military, and the roads, and the national parks, and the airports, and the VA, and the everything else that Trump gets to use on your dime. So naturally, suckers, he’s the best at teaching you how not to suck.
Except that the whole idea is ridiculous.
In response to revelations that Donald Trump may have rolled over massive real estate losses to avoid paying federal taxes for nearly two decades, his campaign is pushing back with an argument that is not only deeply ludicrous, but also deeply revealing about both Trump’s own priorities and his campaign strategy in the final stretch of the race.
Trump has made it clear from the beginning that becoming president is much less, infinitely less important than safeguarding whatever he’s hiding in his taxes. His strategy is: Don’t make me show my taxes, everything else isn’t even secondary. There is no anything else.
Trump’s initial statement declared that he is a “highly-skilled businessman” who has a responsibility “to pay no more tax than legally required.” Similar arguments tumbled forth from Trump surrogates Rudy Giuliani on ABC’s This Week and Chris Christie on Fox News Sunday, who both extolled Trump’s awesome fiscal wizardry. But as Ruth Marcus notes, if Trump’s tax manipulation proves Trump’s brilliance, why the continued refusal to release his returns, which is tantamount to concealing evidence of that brilliance from the public?
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Because whatever is in Trump’s taxes, he would rather lose every day, ten times a day, than let the public take a peek. Half a billion delivered in rubles? Crazy bills to an escort service specializing in Ivanka lookalikes? Massive expenditures trying to find his own birth certificate? Whatever it is, you’re just going to have to wait for someone else who Trump betrayed to give up the goods.
Trump is just going to go on making statements about how screwing up beyond most people’s wildest dreams proves that he’s the best person in the world to put in charge of something where screwing up is life or death for millions.
The second, and more significant, argument from Trump’s campaign is that his firsthand inside knowledge of how to game the tax code in his favor uniquely qualifies him to reform it — and prevent people like him from gaming it in the future. “I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them,” Trump tweeted. Christie added that Trump is well equipped to “change the tax laws” that are “favoring people that they shouldn’t favor,” which he would do “against his own personal interests.”
But there’s a small problem with this whole argument. It’s undermined by Trump’s own tax plan. Thanks to that plan, we already know what Trump’s actual priorities are for “fixing” the tax code.
That’s not necessarily a problem for Spin Team Trump. They’ve already maintained that Trump’s Tip O’ The Rich tax plan actually benefits the middle class. It’s not much of a stretch from there to pretend it isn’t just Trump’s recovery plan from his current bankruptcy.
Here’s another key point: Trump’s plan would also repeal the estate tax, which would allow a tiny minority of the very wealthiest individuals and families to shield assets from taxation. A recent Third Way analysis concluded that Trump’s family would be among the families to benefit, to the tune of $7 billion. Why would anyone believe Trump would fix the tax code to prevent such assets from being shielded in the future?
There’s a better question: Why would anyone believe that Trump is worth $10 billion to begin with? Most of Trump’s value is completely hypothetical, derived from his overblown opinion of what his name would be worth if slapped onto the side of every gas station, residence, warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse in the known world. It’s not real money.
Let the kids inherit it all. Because that and fifty cents … what can you buy for fifty cents, anyway? Other than a Trump.