The New York Times has obtained two decades of tax returns of impeached and manifestly unfit U.S. President Trump. The resulting report shows he is in massive debt, and that Trump paid $750 in taxes to the federal government the year he was elected, 2016, and $750 again his first year in office.
The Times also reports that Trump's tax information reveals "struggling properties, vast write-offs, an audit battle and hundreds of millions in debt coming due."
Decades of income tax avoidance helped, as did "a series of one-shots that may not be available again," but "Now his tax records make clear that he is facing a battery of threats to his business and his own financial well-being," the Times reports:
In 2012, he took out a $100 million mortgage on the commercial space in Trump Tower. He took nearly the entire amount as a payout, his tax records show. His company has paid more than $15 million in interest on the loan, but nothing on the principal. The full $100 million comes due in 2022.
In 2013, he withdrew $95.8 million from his Vornado partnership account.
And in January 2014, he sold $98 million in stocks and bonds, his biggest single month of sales in at least the last two decades. He sold $54 million more in stocks and bonds in 2015, and $68.2 million in 2016. His financial disclosure released in July showed that he had as little as $873,000 in securities left to sell.
Mr. Trump's businesses reported cash on hand of $34.7 million in 2018, down 40 percent from five years earlier.
What's more, the tax records show that Mr. Trump has once again done what he says he regrets, looking back on his early 1990s meltdown: personally guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, a decision that led his lenders to threaten to force him into personal bankruptcy.
This time around, he is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years. Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.
Read the full report by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire at the New York Times.
