President Donald Trump had over $1 billion in business losses from 1985 to 1994, according to new tax information obtained by The New York Times.
The data -- printouts from Trump's official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his 1040 federal tax form -- represent the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president's taxes.
The numbers show that in 1985, Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses -- largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.
Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer, the Times found when it compared his results with detailed information the IRS compiles on an annual sampling of high-income earners. His core business losses in 1990 and 1991 -- more than $250 million each year -- were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the IRS information for those years.
Overall, Trump lost so much money that he was able to avoid paying income taxes for eight of the 10 years. It is not known whether the IRS later required changes after audits.
While the Times did not obtain the president's actual tax returns, it received the information contained in the returns from someone who had legal access to it. The Times was then able to find matching results in the IRS information on top earners -- a publicly available database that each year comprises a one-third sampling of those taxpayers, with identifying details removed. It also confirmed significant findings using other public documents, along with confidential Trump family tax and financial records from the newspaper's 2018 investigation into the origin of the president's wealth.
The White House's response to the new findings has shifted over time.
Several weeks ago, a senior official issued a statement saying: "The president got massive depreciation and tax shelter because of large-scale construction and subsidized developments. That is why the president has always scoffed at the tax system and said you need to change the tax laws. You can make a large income and not have to pay large amount of taxes."
On Saturday, a lawyer for the president, Charles Harder, wrote that the tax information was "demonstrably false," and that the paper's statements "about the president's tax returns and business from 30 years ago are highly inaccurate." He cited no specific errors, but on Tuesday added that "IRS transcripts, particularly before the days of electronic filing, are notoriously inaccurate" and "would not be able to provide a reasonable picture of any taxpayer's return."
But Mark Mazur, a former director of research, analysis and statistics at the IRS, said that data used to create such transcripts had undergone quality control for decades and had been used to analyze economic trends and set national policy.
IRS auditors often refer to the transcripts as "handy" summaries of tax returns, said Mazur, now director of the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington.
Trump broke with decades of precedent in refusing to release any of his tax returns as a presidential candidate, and only a few pages of his returns have become public.
The new tax information does not answer questions raised by House Democrats in their pursuit of the past six years of Trump's tax returns.
The House Ways and Means Committee has asked the IRS to provide Trump's personal and business returns for 2013 through 2018. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Monday refused to do so, saying the panel's request "lacks a legitimate legislative purpose."
Mnuchin's move, which had been expected, is likely to set a legal battle into motion. The chief options available to Democrats are to subpoena the IRS for the returns or to file a lawsuit.
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 05/08/2019