Zero salary donations, sizeable inheritance gains and other key takeaways from Trump’s tax returns

WASHINGTON – Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee have followed through with their vow to make public six years of former president Donald Trump’s tax returns. New York Times reporters combed the pages for key takeaways. Here is a list.

No charitable contributions in 2020

As a presidential candidate in 2015, Mr Trump said he would not take “even one dollar” of the US$400,000 (S$536,000) salary that comes with the job. “I am totally giving up my salary if I become president,” he said.

In his first three years in office, Mr Trump said he donated his salary quarterly. But in 2020, his last full year in office, the documents show that Mr Trump reported US$0 in charitable giving.

His own tax law may have cost him

The tax law Mr Trump signed in late 2017, which took effect the next year, contained some provisions that most likely gave him an advantage at tax time, including the scaling back of the alternative minimum tax on high earners. But one provision, in particular, drastically reduced the income tax deductions he could claim in 2018 and beyond.

The so-called Salt (state and local tax) deduction disproportionately hit higher earners, including Mr Trump, in high-tax cities and states like New York.

In 2019, he reported paying US$8.4 million in state and local taxes. Because of the Salt limits included in his tax law, he was able to deduct only US$10,000 of those taxes paid on his federal income tax return.

Fred Trump a silent actor in the returns

Mr Fred Trump, Mr Trump’s long-dead father, has continued to have an effect on his son’s finances. In 2018, after a decade in which the former president declared no taxable income, he reported taxable income of more than US$24 million and paid US$1 million in federal taxes, nearly the entire total he paid as president.

That income, as previously detailed by the Times, appeared to be the result of more than US$14 million in gains from the sale of an investment his father made in the 1970s, a New York City housing complex named Starrett City, which became part of Mr Trump’s inheritance.

But the new documents show that the effect of his inheritance in 2018 was far greater: Mr Trump reported US$25.7 million in gains from the sale of business properties that he and his siblings inherited or took through trusts, including the sale of Starrett City.

Involvement of a new tax firm in 2020

Accounting firm Mazars USA formally cut ties with Mr Trump and his businesses in 2022, saying it could no longer stand behind a decade of annual financial statements it prepared for the Trump Organisation.

But it turns out Mazars and Mr Trump had begun distancing themselves from each other as early as 2020. BKM Sowan Horan, a Texas-based accounting firm, prepared Mr Trump’s taxes in 2020, his returns show.

Republicans threatening retaliation

The release of the documents on Friday set off a new round of attacks between Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill, including threats of escalating – and politically motivated – future releases of private tax information. Democrats cast the move as necessary oversight on a president who broke decades of precedent in declining to release his returns. But Republicans – who won control of the House in November – warned Democrats that they have started down a dangerous road, and that public pressure could push the incoming majority to release returns from President Joe Biden’s family or a wide range of other private individuals. NYTIMES