Trump's taxes
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 1 October 2020
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What can the New York Times' revelations can tell us about the President's financial affairs?
President Trump paid only $750 in tax federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and paid none in 10 of the past 15 years. That's according to an investigation by The New York Times earlier this week. The President says its all fake news. He's for years refused to publish his income tax returns. David Cay Johnstone, an investigative journalist and editor with DCReport.org, says the Times revelations show why he's keeping them hidden.
Adam Davidson who's written extensively on the President's business ties, says the only way to join up the dots since the death of his father, who was continuously propping up the President's finances, and the end of his lucrative appearances on the reality TV show, The Apprentice, is to work out who's bankrolling Trump's businesses.
But Dan Alexander, writer for Forbes magazine and author of White House Inc: How Donald Trump turned the Presidency into a Business, says that the President does have more assets than debts but he could come across conflicts of interest when he tries to re-finance these debts.
(Image: Novelty US dollar bills printed with Donald Trump's image on. Credit: Joel Forrest / Barcroft Media via Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello there, I'm Ed Butler and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:07.1 | Coming up, the latest revelations on Donald Trump's tax affairs, do they give the lie to |
| 0:12.8 | the Trump legend. |
| 0:14.1 | The myth that he is this modern midas, who everything he touches turns to gold, is shown |
| 0:20.0 | to be nonsense by his own tax returns. |
| 0:22.6 | Reams of documents, we're told, showing the president paid little or no federal tax in recent years. |
| 0:28.7 | He's suffering huge losses, it's claimed, and will soon have to repay some massive debts. |
| 0:33.8 | He's either going to have to refinance or he's going to have to sell off some properties. |
| 0:39.3 | And if you're asking a bank for a large loan while you're president of the United States, |
| 0:44.1 | that can cause obvious conflict of interest concerns. |
| 0:47.4 | Clearing up some of the mess, Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:52.6 | Yeah, it certainly has been the news story of the week in the U.S. election campaign before the first presidential debate, that is. |
| 1:00.7 | How did it figure when the two candidates met in Ohio on Tuesday night? |
| 1:05.2 | Will you tell us how much you paid in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017. |
| 1:12.0 | Millions of dollars. |
| 1:13.2 | You paid millions of dollars? |
| 1:14.6 | Millions of dollars. |
| 1:15.1 | So not seven hundred and you'll get to see it. |
| 1:17.8 | It was the tax laws. |
| 1:19.4 | I don't want to pay tax. |
| 1:20.7 | Before I came here, I was a private developer. |
| 1:23.7 | I was a private business people. |
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