5 reasons Donald Trump really doesn't want his tax returns released

[Uncle Joe]

(snip)

1) Trump may not be as rich as he says he is. Not long after Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015, he said he was worth upwards of $10 billion. Forbes estimated his net worth was less than half that that year. Trump appears to use outlandishly elevated claims of his wealth as proof positive he is smarter (and better) than most people. It’s uniquely possible that a release of his tax returns would take the air out of a balloon that Trump has been blowing up for much of his adult life.

2) He may not pay (or hasn’t paid) his fair share of taxes, despite his claims that he pays “a lot.” We know, thanks to reporting from The New York Times, that Trump paid zero federal taxes in 11 of the 18 years of returns that the publication was able to obtain. And even in 2017, his first year as president, Trump paid just $750 in federal taxes – a paltry sum for someone as wealthy as he is. The Times estimated that “Trump has paid about $400 million less in combined federal income taxes than a very wealthy person who paid the average for that group each year.”

3) The $73 million refund. We learned from the Times’ reporting that Trump applied for a $72.9 million tax refund in 2010. (He claimed large losses that were widely attributed at the time to the decline of his Atlantic City casinos.) The Internal Revenue Service started its audit of the refund in 2011, which was still ongoing as of 2020. It’s uniquely possible that Trump simply doesn’t want to have the refund issue brought back up, for fear he might be on the hook for the amount.

4) Trump may have loans with foreign countries or individuals. We know, via congressional testimony from former Trump confidante Michael Cohen, that the former president was deeply involved in the potential construction of Trump Tower Moscow. And that Cohen lied about that involvement (and how long it stretched) to protect Trump. Donald Trump Jr. reportedly said at a 2008 real estate conference: “In terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. Say, in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo, and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

(snip)

https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/31/politics/donald-trump-tax-returns/index.html

[GreenWave]

1. #5 exposed!

5) He might not donate much (or anything) to charity. Trump long used his charitable organization to feather his own nest and collect political chits rather than for any philanthropic purposes. (Trump shut down the charity in 2018.) It’s not at all clear how generous (if at all) Trump has been to other charities over the past few decades. While there is no requirement for wealthy individuals to make large charitable donations, many do. And so, it would be a decidedly bad look for Trump if it looked like his repeated claims of largesse donated to charity wound up being false.

[Ray Bruns]

20. Oh please. Like trump would give a damn.

It’s definitely number one

[grumpyduck]

3. IOW, five lies. nt

[republianmushroom]

5. I like this post

[MichMan]

6. How is it that an IRS audit takes 10 years?

[Rhiannon12866]

17. +100

[cstanleytech]

7. Having the taxes publicly revealed could also cause a domino effect for him if someone notices

something in them that is false and then comes forward about it thus opening up a potential pandora's box of trouble for Trump especially if its something that is criminal.

[MichMan]

16. What makes you think they will be released to the public?

Anyone who leaked them would be subject to prosecution

[cstanleytech]

18. Unless its done on the floor of the House.

But that aside the other thing is if it does leak they would have to find the leaker to catch them.

[OMGWTF]

8. All of 'em, Katie!

[OneCrazyDiamond]

9. Almost two years out

and we still haven't seen his taxes. FFS, he said he would release them when he was campaigning his first round.

[question everything]

10. No one is telling him what to do. "I alone"

[Warpy]

11. Sounds about right

I've thought from the beginning his empire was floated on an ocean of Russian mob debt and that Putin told him if he ran, he wouldn't have to pay the vig for the duration.

Oh, I think at least some of his original inheritance is sitting safely offshore, he's always been great at losing other people's money. I think he's just going to be exposed as a big sack of hot air for the assets he can claim to own to a whole lot of people who think he's really rich.

We already know he's a cheap bastard who doesn't give a dime to help anyone else and a typical right wing asshole who will pay taxes to any country but his own.

[Evolve Dammit]

12. I don't care. Just release the damn things and let the experts analyze. Then file charges as we

rightfully expect. The returns (six or more years the source of contention), will contain a plethora of errors, omissions and fraudulent statements that have led the Feds to investigate and compel Weisselberg to cooperate in Trump Corp. May Orange Boy finally be exposed as the total fraud he is.

[relayerbob]

13. #6 - They don't match the records of the other documents they have

[bucolic_frolic]

14. He could be in hock to anybody or anything

but cnn doesn't understand things on the granular level

[Aussie105]

15. The "Clever Accounting" Trump has used for years

to minimize his taxes won't stand up to close scrutiny.

Too many fudge factors, too many $ amounts used in various places too massaged to be accurate.

Trump is sunk on so many different levels if those tax returns are put under close scrutiny, and he knows it.

Trump equates his self worth as a human being with his imagined wealth, any claw-back by the tax people will make him verry, very upset.
(Which is a good thing.)

An avenue worth pursuing. After all, Al Capone went down for fudging the books.

[czarjak]

19. "You can't see my taxes, they're under audit" is The Big Lie. I have proof-positive that that's BS.