DONALD Trump’s tax returns have shown that the US President spent almost 100 times more on hair styling during his run on The Apprentice than he paid in tax the year he took office.
Revealed in a bombshell story from The New York Times, Trump’s taxes paint a picture of a man who relies more on image than substance, and who serially avoids paying his dues.
Aside from the $70,000 on hair cuts, these are the five main takeaways from the story which is sure to shake the US presidential election coming on November 3, and the first televised debate between the incumbent and challenger, Joe Biden, which will be screened tomorrow.
1: How much Trump paid
The tax returns, which provide a picture of Trump’s business from Trump’s side and are not the result of a detailed independent investigation, show he paid just $750 (£581) in tax the year he became president.
He also paid the same amount, just $750, the following year (2017).
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In the 18 years the paper had access to, Trump was found to have paid precisely nothing in 11 of those years.
However, his average annual tax payment over those years is $1.4m (£1.08m). This is far below other people in his wealth bracket (the top 0.001%), who pay an average of $25m (£19.3m) a year.
2: Trump may end up in federal court over his taxes
The president has funded his lavish lifestyle by writing off personal expenses, such as his family retreat at Seven Springs in New York State, as business ones.
This has allowed him to run his companies at huge losses and use those losses to offset any taxes he has to pay.
He took home a vast sum due to his work on The Apprentice, and paid around $95 million (£73.6m) in taxes as a result over those 18 years.
However, a few years later he declared massive losses on his Atlantic City casinos and claimed nearly all of the money back.
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Trump was given a $72.9m tax refund, but in order to do so he had to “abandon” his Atlantic City ventures.
This meant he could not have gained in any way from his investment.
However, it seems the president actually walked away with 5 percent of a new firm. Having done so would invalidate his refund, which he would have to pay back with interest, a figure that may be over $100m (£77.5m).
The US taxman, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), is still auditing Trump over this claim, which may end up in federal court.
3: Trump is under a mountain of debt
In the 1990s the now-president personally guaranteed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loans.
These loans, totalling around $421m (£326m), are coming due in the next few years, with some due as soon as four months from now.
Should he win re-election, the New York Times reports, his creditors may be looking at the unprecedented situation of foreclosing on a sitting president.
The returns also show that Trump has failed to pay back a total of $287m (£222m) to his creditors since 2010.
4: Trump’s golf courses are bleeding money
Although the president refers to them as the backbone of his empire, Trump’s golf courses are actually hemorrhaging money.
His three European courses, Hotel Doonbeg in Ireland, International Golf Links Aberdeen, and Trump Turnberry, have reported a combined $63.6m (£49.3m) in losses.
Since 2000, Trump has reported losses of $315.6m (£244m) across all the golf courses he owns.
5: The president’s family seem to have benefited from his underhanded tactics
Large Trump projects in foreign countries, including a $5m hotel deal in Azerbaijan and $3m in income from Dubai, came with large consultancy fees.
These fees generally equalled around one-fifth of the total money involved, so $1.1m in Azerbaijan and $630,000 in Dubai.
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Although Trump’s private records do not name the beneficiaries of this cash, they do show that his company once paid $747,622 in fees to an unnamed consultant for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, Canada.
Coincidentally, Ivanka Trump’s public disclosure forms show that she had received an identical amount through a consulting company she co-owned.
This reflects some of what the president’s father, Fred Trump, was found to have done in order to pass his money onto his children without paying gift tax.
Extra: His presidential bid may have just been a ploy to boost his brand
As has been theorised for years, Trump may have never actually planned on becoming president.
His long-shot campaign was launched in 2015, when the Trump brand, by far his most valuable asset, was flailing.
The president's dire finances may have prompted his to make the gambit which, as the New York Times reported was "at least in part ... to reanimate the marketability of his name".
The full New York Times report can be read on the newspaper's website.
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