[Heck, she probably paid more in U.S. federal income tax, and she doesn’t even live here]

It did sound like Trump used some sketchy techniques to avoid paying taxes, such as stiffing people on loans (if the NYT article is correct).

I think a lot of the hype around people paying more taxes than rich people in a given year is an anti-pattern though. There are obviously some people doing sketchy or illegal things to avoid paying tax, and I personally think the law should be enforced on them. It's perfectly reasonable for a rich person to pay zero in taxes though, and if you think about how money works, then you would actually expect rich people to pay tax less often. They already have a bunch of money in their personal bank account, so they don't need to acquire any new income in order to live comfortably, so it makes sense that they would keep all their new assets in business assets or deferred assets or whatever. And then if they need to convert their business asset into spendable money, like Bezos wanting to buy a $1B yacht or something absurd, then he would need to sell Amazon stock which would be taxed as income. It seems like most people don't realize that stock in a company isn't money or a spendable asset. For it to count as money, you have to actually sell it to someone, which reduces your ownership and ability to control your company. Companies would be different if their founders could not maintain large ownership and control. We'd end up with a lot of companies that are distributed across many people, and that are excruciatingly slow, non-innovative, and dumb, just like governments are. There is a place for government, but using the government style for innovative products would make the world move 10 times slower.

I don't really comment in politics much, sorry for the wall of text lol.

Why hello there

Honestly, I cannot claim to be a tax expert, and I haven't yet waded my way through the whole NYT expose (it's quite long).

However, the story suggests the following at a bare minimum:

1. Trump is pretty damn bad at business, at least regarding his real estate holdings. To the extent he does make money, he makes it by shilling and marketing himself and appearing on TV, basically. He's always been a "celebrity in politics," but all of this just underscores that. A major foundation of his persona as a business talent is shot to pieces.
2. There's a huge temptation for a President who is both as wealth-obsessed and as financially distressed as Trump is to self-deal, directing government business to his own properties, and quite possibly sell out America's interests in other ways.
3. It explains perfectly Trump's ongoing and unprecedented efforts to stonewall and withhold his tax records from public scrutiny, when every modern presidential candidate since Nixon has done so willingly.
4. It opens up a general conversation about the brokenness of our tax system. There may be some economic reasons to allow tax write-offs: but this much over this large of an amount of time? It all smells like the socialization of risk and the privatization of profits.

I'm not sure that actual tax fraud on the part of Trump has been proven (yet), but it very well could be in time, and what this exposes is plenty bad enough.

In theory someone in his position could be deliberately spending a ton of money on his businesses in order to reach a zero tax requirement across his businesses. Maybe make everything ultra fancy just for fun because it makes you feel good to own the fanciest hotels (I haven't been in a Trump resort, so no idea) and travel to all your resorts and feel like a king. So you'd lose money on the resorts, but have super nice resorts, and maybe be able to make a lot of money on them in the future, or sell them for a high price. So we'll see if he pays taxes when that happens.

when you meet the one guy on imgflip who actually agrees with the political ideas of my 13 year old brain

and hes worried about joe biden "raising taxes" hes spend all of our tax money on his little golfing every weekend, on his lil course. smh

[image deleted]

Redux for politics imgflip.com/i/4gkp1c

Im not even an adult but ive probably spent more money at Walmart than trump has on taxes

I'm sure the difference is, that as a woke SJW, she *wanted* to pay more in taxes than she's legally required to. That's some upside down Aussie thinking for you right there, KF.

btw, did you pay more in taxes than you are legally required to pay? I know I didn't... at least not intentionally. That damn accountant we have is one of those woke SJW's like you... he probably snuck in some extra money for the gubment... damnit!

Actually, why don't we do an informal poll right here. Anyone who has posted a reply to this meme, just say whether you paid more in taxes last year, or any year for that matter, than you're legally required to.

btw, SJWs, there's nothing stopping you from sending money directly to the government. So, go ahead, put your money where your outrage is.