Tag Archives: tax returns

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Tax returns, Trump, tax returns … release them!

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I am taking a bit of a leap here in challenging the New York Times on an editorial … with which I happen to agree.

The Times says Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump needs to release his tax returns. He needs to do what candidates of both parties have done since 1976. There’s no law requiring him to release the returns; it’s merely been customary for candidates to do so to reveal to the public just how they conduct their personal financial business.

Here’s the editorial. Take a look. The Times raises excellent points.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/21/opinion/mr-trumps-stupid-excuses-on-taxes.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

What the Times missed, though, is a simple point: It didn’t challenge Trump’s assertion that he’s being audited by the Internal Revenue Service.

The audit is the lame excuse he and his campaign team — mainly his sons — have used to keep the information from public information. The IRS, though, says an audit doesn’t preclude releasing the tax returns.

More to the point, though, is that Trump hasn’t even provided evidence that the IRS even is conducting an audit. He hasn’t given us any indication of a letter, or a notice, or a note tossed in over the transom alerting him of the audit.

He is asking us to take his word for it that the IRS is conducting an audit.

All of this is a shameful, disgraceful display of hypocrisy and duplicity from someone who for years demanded proof of President Obama’s place of birth and his academic records … not that any of it matters to those who have backed his candidacy.

OK, Donald Trump. The time has long passed for you to come clean and do what you have demanded of Barack Obama.

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Trump’s wealth called into question once more

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Wait a second!

How can a presidential candidate who keeps crowing about his fabulous wealth spend a six-figure amount of dough to pay off legal debts from a charity he founded.

That’s what the Washington Post has reported in connection with Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee.

The Post reports that Trump dipped into his charity foundation’s pool. He snatched $258,000 out of it to pay off some legal bills he had accrued.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-used-258000-from-his-charity-to-settle-legal-problems/2016/09/20/adc88f9c-7d11-11e6-ac8e-cf8e0dd91dc7_story.html

Doesn’t that betray a trust he made to the donors of his charity? Is this the way to spend money dedicated to do “good work”?

And how does someone with the kind of wealth he keeps telling he has need to use charitable foundation money in the first place?

The Post has compiled a thorough investigation of the story. Trump’s campaign, of course, declared it was full of errors. No one has specified the errors, or even said the story is false.

We all know, of course, that Trump can prove his wealth simply by releasing his tax returns to the public as other presidential candidates have been doing for the past 40 years.

Oh … wait.

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Yes, Donald, ‘people’ care about those tax returns

trump

Donald J. Trump has asserted that “people” don’t care about his tax returns.

I now shall differ with the Republican presidential nominee.

When he says “people,” he refers to the 30 percent or so of the voting public that has bought into his message — whatever it is — that has propelled him to the GOP nomination.

The rest of us? Well, I think others care.

He’s not releasing his tax returns ostensibly because of an Internal Revenue Service audit … according to Trump. The IRS says it’s nonsense, that an audit doesn’t preclude someone from revealing the returns.

He likely won’t release them until after the election, presuming of course he gets elected. If he loses — which is what I believe will happen — we’ll never see them.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/donald-trump-wants-you-to-trust-him-blindly/2016/09/06/fa370832-745a-11e6-be4f-3f42f2e5a49e_story.html?postshare=6521473201452988&tid=ss_fb&utm_term=.e2ee1f29ab54

Trump’s tax returns are our business. He might not believe so, but they are.

If someone seeks to become president of the United States, then everything about them becomes part of the public’s concern. That certainly ought to include the way the candidate handles his financial affairs. It provides a window that allows us to understand how he might govern.

If the candidate is going to propose certain tax obligations on the people he or she governs, then we need to know whether that candidate also is paying his or her fair share of taxes. Is that so unreasonable? I think not.

Trump is playing fast and loose with a longstanding political custom dating back 40 years. Presidential candidates have released their tax returns to give Americans a fuller picture of what they’re buying into — or rejecting.

Come clean, Donald Trump.

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Gov. Pence takes the lead on tax returns

tax-return-form

This just in: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence is going to release his tax returns.

Meanwhile, the guy who heads the Republican Party’s presidential ticket, Donald J. Trump, continues to keep his tax returns away from public scrutiny.

Pence is running alongside Trump for the White House.

He told “Meet the Press” in remarks to be broadcast Sunday that he’s going to turn his tax returns loose for the public to inspect.

Oh, and what about Trump? “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd asked Pence. Trump will do so eventually, as soon as the Internal Revenue Service completes its audit.

Hold the phone, dude!

An IRS audit doesn’t preclude release of tax returns.

Once again, I shall state that Trump is refusing to do something that’s been customary for presidential candidates since 1976. No, there’s no law requiring release of the returns. It’s just been a bipartisan tradition that has its roots in the immediate post-Watergate era.

In 1976, Republican President Gerald Ford and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter agreed to release their returns in reaction to the constitutional scandal that took down a president and sent others to prison.

I’m glad to see Gov. Pence doing the right thing.

Now …

How about the guy at the top of his ticket?

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Now … about that doctor’s note

donald health

As long as we’re talking about records — or the lack thereof — let’s visit briefly about that strange doctor’s note Donald J. Trump produced that proclaimed him the most physically fit presidential candidate in world history.

OK, so I exaggerated that description.

Trump pulled this note out in late 2015 to tell us that he is fit as a fiddle. Dr. Harold Bornstein has been the Republican presidential nominee’s physician since 1980. Now we hear that the doc wrote it in five minutes while sitting in a limo that Trump had sent for him.

Some of the language that Dr. Bornstein used to describe Trump’s physical fitness for the presidency seemed, well, a bit unusual and not written in the kind of tone one expects from a medical doctor. It doesn’t read like a clinical analysis.

Trump’s blood pressure is “astonishingly excellent.” His stamina is “extraordinary.”

And get a load of this. According to Politico: “It begins ‘To Whom My Concerns,’ and says that Bornstein’s most recent medical examination of Trump ‘showed only positive results’ — medical terminology that usually indicates confirmation of a certain condition.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/donald-trump-doctor-letter-227464#ixzz4IX8HKzAn

Trump said he would produce a “full medical report.” He showed us the letter instead. Here it is:

https://www.donaldjtrump.com/images/uploads/trump_health_record.pdf

It’s worth mentioning here because Trump and his surrogates keep suggesting that Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton’s health isn’t up to par. A spokeswoman who lacks any medical training has diagnosed dysphasia in Clinton. Former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani has said repeatedly that something is physically wrong with Clinton.

So, here’s what we ought to do.

Let’s all insist that both candidates produce detailed medical reports on their physical condition that do not contain such hysterical and flowery descriptions of the candidates’ well-being.

Trump and his surrogates have started this idiotic questioning of Clinton’s health. Trump also has insisted that Barack Obama isn’t a real American and has questioned the president’s academic record.

It’s time now for Donald Trump to deliver the real goods on his own physical condition.

Oh, and those tax returns, too!

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Let’s see the audit letter, Mr. Trump

tax-return-form

Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump has made a lot of noise about several aspects of Barack Obama personal history.

* He demanded to see a birth certificate proving that Barack Sr. and Ann Dunham Obama’s son was born in Hawaii and not in Kenya. The president produced a long-firm birth certificate issued in Honolulu. Trump still isn’t convinced that, yep, Barack Obama is constitutionally qualified to hold the most powerful office in the world.

* He continues to demand to see academic records of young Barack’s college career.

So, how is he dealing with demands that he reveal his tax returns, which has been a custom for major-party presidential nominees dating back to the 1976 campaign?

He refuses. Trump says he is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service; the IRS, though, says a routine audit does not impede someone from releasing the returns.

So, as long as Trump has been making demands of, say, the president of the United States to prove certain things about his past, let’s try this one on for size.

Why won’t Trump release a copy of the letter from the IRS informing him of the audit?

No one has seen the letter.

I believe, therefore, it is fair to ask: Is Donald J. Trump really and truly being audited by the IRS?

Well … ?

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‘Transparency’ at issue in tax returns

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So help me, I don’t know whether to laugh, scream or get roaring drunk after reading this.

South Carolina U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford has called on Donald J. Trump to release his tax returns for public scrutiny.

Here’s part of what Sanford wrote in an op-ed: “To him, demands that he release his tax returns are just a ploy by his opponents and enemies to undermine his campaign. But that obstinacy will have consequences. Not releasing his tax returns would hurt transparency in our democratic process, and particularly in how voters evaluate the men and women vying to be our leaders. Whether he wins or loses, that is something our country cannot afford.”

You need to consider a phrase in this passage, the part about Trump’s failure to release his tax returns would “hurt transparency in our democratic process.”

Here’s the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/opinion/i-support-you-donald-trump-now-release-your-tax-returns.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region&_r=1

What makes this so damn hilarious is that it comes from a fellow Republican, Sanford, who — while he was governor of South Carolina — instructed his staff to lie about his whereabouts while he was cavorting in Argentina with a woman who was not his wife.

Do you remember the infamous “hiking the Appalachian Trail” dodge his staffers used to deceive the public over his whereabouts?

Transparency, Rep. Sanford? Did you, of all people, really say that?

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Pence pledges to release tax returns … and Trump?

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Mike Pence isn’t exactly “going rogue,” to borrow a phrase coined eight years ago by another candidate for vice president, former half-term Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

But the Indiana governor — and the Republicans’ nominee for vice president — is saying something his running mate isn’t saying.

He plans to release his personal tax returns before Election Day.

It’s a departure — and a welcomed one at that — from the refusal by GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump to release his tax returns.

Pence assures us it will be a quick read once they returns become known. I believe him.

Trump’s returns — which also should be released for public review — seem to present some issues for the GOP presidential nominee.

Is Trump as rich as he boasts? Has he given anything to charity? Has he paid his “fair share” of income tax, or any at all?

I welcome Gov. Pence’s decision to release his returns.

I do not, though, expect Gov. Pence to talk his running mate into following suit.

business news, national news, political news

About those tax returns, Mr. Trump

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tax-return-form

Let’s revisit an issue that seems to have re-entered the debate over Donald J. Trump’s presidential candidacy.

Tax returns.

The Democrats’ vice-presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, brought the issue up again Wednesday night while accepting his party’s nomination. He asked out loud and in front of the nation why the GOP nominee won’t follow custom and release his tax returns.

He wondered — again out loud — whether Trump is hiding anything from the public whose votes he is seeking.

There’s no law requiring presidential and vice-presidential nominees to reveal their tax returns to the public. It has become a custom since the 1976 election between President Ford and former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter.

For four decades, candidates have released this information for public review.

Kaine and others have wondered many things about Trump’s personal financial information.

* Is he as rich as he says he is? I mean, he boasts constantly about his vast wealth.

* Is he giving sufficient amounts of his income to charity?

* Is he — as Sen. Kaine wondered — paying his “fair share of taxes”?

* Are there some foreign investments that need careful scrutiny? Hasn’t the candidate vowed to “put America first”?

* Does the real estate mogul have some connection with Russia, which has become a serious discussion point in recent days?

Trump has said he can’t release his returns because of an on-going audit. Internal Revenue Service officials say an audit does not preclude someone from releasing his or her returns.

Who’s lying here? I tend to believe the IRS version of what’s allowed and what is not.

Trump’s campaign is based in large part on his business acumen. He says he wants to do for the country what he’s done in private business. If that’s his major selling point, well, it seems to me that the public has a right to examine precisely what he has done in his business life.

The public also has the right to determine whether the income he has earned and the taxes he has paid match up the way they should — and must — for all the rest of us.

The nominee has said he’s “on your side.” Let’s see for ourselves.

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Let ‘tradition’ stand regarding tax returns

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Call me a traditionalist.

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, wants Congress to enact legislation that requires presidential candidates to release their tax returns for public inspection.

With all due respect to my home boy, I think the bill is an overreach.

Wyden is responding to presumptive Republican presidential frontrunner Donald J. Trump’s refusal to release his returns. Trump contends his returns are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service, to which the IRS has responded “so what?”; an audit doesn’t preclude the release of the returns.

http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/281194-dem-senator-offers-bill-to-require-candidates-to-release-tax-returns

The tradition has been for presidential candidates to release their returns. They’ve been doing it since 1976, the first election after the Watergate constitutional crisis that forced President Nixon to resign.

My own sense is that tradition ought to stand.

I believe candidates’ refusal to release those returns give voters a key gauge of their character. It gives voters a chance to determine a candidate’s trustworthiness. It enables voters to use such refusal as a measuring stick as to whether the candidate deserves their ballot-box endorsement.

To be sure, Wyden has a dog in this fight. He has endorsed Democratic frontrunner Hillary Rodham Clinton, who in turn has been blasting Trump to smithereens over his refusal to release his tax returns.

I get Sen. Wyden’s bias.

I also believe “tradition” ought to stand as a de facto rule. Let the presidential candidates decide whether to comply … and then let voters decide on the correctness of their refusal.