WASHINGTON (REUTERS) - Mr Donald Trump's decision to take a US$916 million (S$1.25 billion) loss on his 1995 income tax return showed his business acumen and "genius" at figuring out how to minimise his tax bill, two of the Republican presidential candidate's advisers said on Sunday (Oct 2).
"This is a perfectly legal application of the tax code. And he would have been fool not to take advantage of it," said Mr Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor who is one of Mr Trump's advisers.
Speaking on the ABC programme This Week, Mr Giuliani said that as a business owner, Mr Trump has a "fiduciary duty" to the investors in his real estate company to maximise profits. "He's a genius at how to take advantage of legal remedies that can help your company survive and grow," Mr Giuliani said.
The New York Times reported on Saturday that it had obtained Mr Trump's 1995 tax records and it quoted experts as saying that the US$916 million loss he reported for that year may have allowed him to avoid paying federal income taxes for up to 18 years.
Ms Susanne Craig, one of the Times reporters who was bylined on the story about Mr Trump's tax records, said the tax documents arrived in a manila envelope in her mailbox at the Times with a return address of the The Trump Organisation.
"The envelope looked legitimate. I opened it, anxiously, and was astonished," Ms Craig wrote in a first-person account of her reporting on the story.
She said the Trump campaign had threatened the newspaper with legal action if it decided to publish the documents.
The tax benefits outlined in the documents stemmed from financial deals Mr Trump made that went bad in the early 1990s.
The Trump campaign, in a statement responding to the Times report on Saturday, said that the tax document was obtained illegally and accused the New York Times of operating as an extension of the presidential campaign of Mrs Hillary Clinton, Mr Trump's rival in the Nov 8 election.
"I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them. #failing@nytimes," Mr Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday.
Mr Chris Christie, New Jersey governor and head of Mr Trump's presidential transition team, said that Mr Trump's records showed that the US tax code was an "absolute mess" and that Mr Trump was the best person to fix it.
"There's no one who has shown more genius in their way to manoeuvre about the tax code as he rightfully used the laws to do that," Mr Christie said on Fox News Sunday.
But Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the tax write-off declared by Mr Trump "shows the colossal scale of his business failures" and also shows that the wealthy real estate developer operates under a different set of rules than those that apply to ordinary taxpayers.
Mrs Clinton has repeatedly called on Mr Trump to release his tax returns, as is standard procedure for modern presidential candidates.
Mr Trump has declined to release his tax records, saying he will not do so until an audit of his returns by the Internal Revenue Service is complete.
The IRS has said that an audit does not bar an individual from sharing their own tax information.
