By Aaron Miller-
U.S president , Donald Trump, paid just $750 (£580) in federal income tax both in 2016, the year he ran for the US presidency, and in his first year in the White House, according to the New York Times says.
The newspaper claims to have obtained tax records for Mr Trump and his companies over two decades – also says that he paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.
The records reveal “chronic losses and years of tax avoidance”, it says.
Mr Trump called the report “fake news”.
“Actually I paid tax. And you’ll see that as soon as my tax returns – it’s under audit, they’ve been under audit for a long time,” he told reporters after the story was published on Sunday.
Mr.Trump is the first president since the 1970s not to make his tax returns public.
The Times said it obtained the information from sources with legal access to it.
The Times said it reviewed tax returns relating to President Trump and companies owned by the Trump Organization going back to the 1990s, as well as his personal returns for 2016 and 2017.
The reports states that with mr.Trump’s financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.
The report came just days before Mr Trump’s first presidential debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden and weeks before the 3 November election. It states that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
According to its findings, the president paid just $750 in income taxes in both 2016 and 2017, while he paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years, “largely because he reported losing much more money than he made”.
Mr Trump called the report “fake news”.
“Actually I paid tax. And you’ll see that as soon as my tax returns – it’s under audit, they’ve been under audit for a long time,” he told reporters after the story was published on Sunday.
Chronic Losses
The newspaper says his reports to the IRS “portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes”.
President Trump claims to have made at least $434.9m in 2018.
The newspaper says that in fact, Trump’s tax returns show the president had instead gone into the red, with $47.4m in losses.
The Trump Organization joined the president in denying the allegations in the report. The company’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, told the Times that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate”.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the most powerful Democrat in Washington, said the report showed Mr Trump had taken “extraordinary measures” to “game the tax code and avoid paying his fair share of taxes”.