Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Donald Trump’s Taxes - The New Yorker

"Thanks to the quirks of the U.S. tax code, the staggering losses of his failures in the early nineteen-nineties may have helped Trump avoid federal taxes through his late-nineties comeback, the springboard that launched him into politics. The danger for Trump is not that the Times scoop exposes him as a rapacious capitalist who took advantage of the U.S. tax code. He essentially admitted, in the first debate, that there were years when he paid no federal taxes. The bigger threat to him is that the scoop reminds the public that Trump is not a great businessman, but he is a great con man—and his latest mark is the American voter."

 

Good question. Some additional tax records from Trump would clear it up.

 

The flood of bad news for Trump is almost too much at this point. A bunch of these could be a major hit, but it's turning into white noise.

 

She just made the club with that backtrack.

 

Making America cleverly edit video again.

Video purporting anti-Trump violence a hoax, Hanford police say

 

Jimmy Hoffa by way of David Mamet. It's a good line.

Hoffa and Trump weren't so unlike, either. Not in their manner, anyhow. They would have been adversaries, of course, back in the day.

 

We lock horns when you think I'm speaking for myself. I'm not. I am, however, speaking about senitments like the below post:

 

Tomorrow, we'll see the most shocking moment of the campaign yet. Two actual adults (ok, vice-presidential candidates) will speak in relatively straightforward English, easily articulate ideas and policies, and display normal levels of empathy.

After that, we're back to the island of misfit toys. Will the nation survive?

 

Don't say I never gave you nothing YF ...

Amazingly, that's not a story about the current Florida AG (who has shown every sign of being bought off). That was in 2005 to Charlie Crist as he was gearing up to run for governor. The same Crist who is running this fall for the House after becoming, you guessed it, a Democrat.

 

So this is how depreciation works. I am no expert and I would welcome corrections. Also this is an oversimplified example whose numbers I made up.

Say you build a hotel for 100 million. The tax law says this asset will lose value because of wear and tear at 10% a year and you get to write off 10 million dollars a year in income. So you would pay no taxes on this hotel's rental income profit up to $10 million dollars per year for 10 years. It does not matter whether the hotel actually loses value.

You pay no taxes on this hotel until the depreciation runs out no matter what the market value. If you sell it after 10 years for say $150 million you would then have to pay taxes on the $50 million dollars in capital gains at a lower rate that regular income tax. You also paid no income taxes for ten years on up to $100 million of income. This rationale is that it encourages people to build hotels, which of course it does.