is the title of this Fact Checker column by Glenn Kessler in today’s Washington Post. I strongly suggest that everyone take the time not only to read it, but to distribute it, especially to any acquaintances thinking of voting for Trump because “he’s a winner — that is, if they are still open to reason.
It starts with a history of Trump and his tax returns — including his commitment to release them if Obama released his long form birth certificate (remember, Trump has never backed off his birtherism and that is how he built his relationship with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio). As the column notes
But once Obama released his birth certificate, Trump hedged. “At the appropriate time I’m going to do it,” he said. The appropriate time never came.
We are also reminded that Trump was critical of Mitt Romney being slow to release his returns 4 years ago (which makes it somewhat ironic that Romney considers it “disqualifying” that Trump is not releasing his own), and said at the time he would have no trouble releasing his returns:
“I actually think that it’s a great thing when you can show that you’ve been successful, and that you’ve made a lot of money, that you’ve employed a lot of people. I actually think that it’s a positive.”
Further, he has actually legally been required to release — albeit not to the public — returns on two occasions. On the first, he was under audit (as was Richard Nixon when he released his tax return that ultimately resulted in a $500,000 penalty). Trump
provided tax returns from 2000 to 2004 — while they were under audit by the Internal Revenue Service — to state gambling officials in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, as part of the process of seeking casino licenses in those states, CNN reported.
Second, note carefully the following three paragraphs, and perhaps even follow the embedded hot links (especially the 2nd, which leads to a 2005 New York Times piece by O’Brien, the man Trump sued):
Trump is highly sensitive about suggestions that he is not as wealthy as he claims. He sued Timothy O’Brien, author of the 2005 book “TrumpNation,” because O’Brien calculated that Trump was not worth as much as he said. (O’Brien concluded Trump was worth just $150 million to $250 million.)
As part of discovery in the lawsuit, Trump had to turn over his tax returns. Trump lost the case, but the tax returns remain sealed, and O’Brien is not permitted to speak about them. “There’s reasons, I think, he doesn’t want to give up his tax returns,” O’Brien recently told Politico. “It’s because you see what his income actually is in those returns.”
O’Brien’s comment suggests that Trump’s income is much less than he has long suggested, even if he is associated with assets emblazoned with the “Trump” name all over them. Tax returns also might actually help experts make educated guesses about Trump’s true net worth.
The key points in the piece begin with what you have just read, that a person’s tax return reveals their annual income. Unlike the required financial disclosure form in order to run for Federal office, which is not audited, a tax return is usually carefully checked because of the legal penalties (fines and the possibility of imprisonment) for false statements therein.
The next key point is a tax return discloses the source of one’s income. Perhaps we might discover that Trump makes more money from his speeches and his books than he does from the businesses he controls?
Third, we would learn about a person’s charitable contributions. Romney in 2011 gave about $2.2 million, the Clintons in 2014 gave $3 million, and the Sanders gave $8,300 the same year.
Trump claims to have given over $100 million to his charity in the past five years,
but a Washington Post investigation found not a cent in actual cash — mostly just free rounds of golf, given away by his courses for charity auctions and raffles. Trump’s tax return would clear up exactly how much he has really given to charity — indeed, whether he has given anything at all.
The two remaining points would be that disclosing his tax returns would show how aggressive Trump has been in doing his taxes, for example, what kinds of shelters has he used to avoid taxes; and what percentage of his income went to taxes. Sometimes that can actually come from the charitable deductions claimed — I remember a bit of a brouhaha for the Clintons deducting the value of used underwear donated to a charity. You might also remember that for the one year’s worth of taxes released by Romney, he had an effective tax rate even lower than the 15% tax paid on carried interest. As I recall, when I glanced at our tax return for the year in question, my wife and I had paid about the same effective tax rate as Romney, but we did not have multiple houses nor were we in need of a car elevator.
Kessler’s piece notes that
The IRS every year discloses information on the taxes of the 400 richest taxpayers, and Trump’s numbers could be compared to this rarefied group. Voters would discover whether Trump even qualifies. In 2013, a minimum annual income of $100 million was required.
What if Trump in fact did not qualify? Well, it could be the result of the circumstances of one year — after all, for our 2013 taxes our effective rate went way down, but that was both because of a precipitous loss of income and a very large deduction for medical expenses, both a direct result of my wife being diagnosed and then treated for her blood cancer.
Which, by the way, is why releasing only one year’s return — as was done by Romney in 2012 and has somewhat been done by Sanders this year — is insufficient to get a true picture.
We know about Romney’s comments on this topic: they have been widely disseminated.
So what is Glenn Kessler’s conclusion on this subject:
Trump falsely claims that voters would learn nothing from his tax returns. To the contrary, voters would learn a lot of information that Trump has long tried to hide from the public. Tax returns would help lift a veil of secrecy about Trump’s finances — and let voters know whether his claims about his wealth and charitable giving are true, or if he’s just a bombastic man behind the curtain akin to the Wizard of Oz.
Kessler offers ratings from truthfulness (Gepettos) to lying (Pinocchios) for statements by politicians. Trump has received no Gepettos, Clinton has received several. Clinton has received I believe a total of 8 Pinocchios so far this campaign, making her, as has been separately noted by Jane Mayer, the most truthful of the candidates.
For this claim, Trump has maxed out.
He receives four Pinocchios.
Will it make a difference?
Well, Clinton is now speaking about the issue, as you can see in a separate piece in today’s Times titled Hillary Clinton Mocks Donald Trump Over Not Releasing Tax Returns. It is not just that she mocks him, but uses his failure to release his returns as an occasion for going after his tax plan:
She said that his tax plan — which envisions a top tax rate of 25 percent, compared with the current maximum rate of 39.6 percent — would provide $3 trillion in tax relief to millionaires and billionaires over the next decade, a figure that her campaign attributed to an analyst at a left-leaning think tank. She also cited studies showing that the plan would add $34 trillion to the national debt over 20 years.
“Donald Trump’s tax plan was written by a billionaire for billionaires,” Mrs. Clinton said, adding that $3 trillion would be “enough money to make Social Security and Medicare solvent for the next 75 years.”
I think there is a real possibility of connecting Trump’s tax policy with his failure to release his returns in a way that does some real damage, and the more that Clinton talks about it, the more likely the press will cover it.
And I have to wonder whether, if he has not yet released his returns, whether Trump will even be willing to do a debate: the question would surely come up.
I found the Kessler column useful, and thought it worth sharing.
Hope you agree.