Update: On September 27, Trump announced that his tax reform project abolish, as promised, the alternative minimum tax. In 2005, he paid $31.3 million because of the provision, which aims to ensure that very high earners pay at least some tax.
US President Donald Trump earned nearly $153 million in 2005, according to a report of The daily beast and the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC.
Trump and his wife Melania paid $38.4 million in income tax, a tax rate of about 25%, according to the tax return that MSNBC put online (pdf). It’s about tax bracket for a married couple earning between $75,000 and $152,000. Of that, however, only $5.3 million came from regular federal income taxes, suggesting that Trump was still making up for the $916 million in losses he reported in a 1995 return earlier. published by the New York Times (pay wall). There was $1.9 million in self-employment tax. And $31.3 million was paid in “Alternative Minimum Tax,” which is applied to high-income earners with large deductions to ensure they “pay at least a minimum amount of tax.” the taxman says.
It’s a tax that Trump has sworn to abolishand which earns the US treasury tens of billions of dollars each year for the nation’s wealthiest.
The daily beast and Maddow cited reports from Trump biographer David Cay Johnston, who runs the website www.dcreport.org, which was down at press time. The news, however, reveals few longstanding questions about Donald Trump’s overall wealth and the sources of his income. Johnston only got Form 1040, the first two pages of the personal tax return. As Maddow noted on her show, the full return would include many more pages that would provide insight into how Trump’s taxes were calculated as well as his net worth.
“There must be something lurking in his returns,” Johnston told Maddow. Anyway, it wasn’t made available tonight.
Trump repeatedly refused to release his tax returns during the presidential campaign, defying 40 years of precedent. Before the election, he claimed he couldn’t because he was being audited by the IRS. (Wouldn’t confirm whether or not it was – and an audit doesn’t preclude posting feedback.)
Then, shortly before his inauguration, he told reporters that he wouldn’t let them go because “the only ones who care about my tax returns are the journalists.” This was clearly wrong; the first petition filed on the White House website on the same day of his inauguration (January 20), demanded that he publish his tax returns and reached 100,000 signatures in just one day, forcing the White House to respond to the request before April 20. now has more than a million signatures.
Why Trump refused to release his statements is the subject of much speculation. In his 2005 book TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald, Tim O’Brien quoted three people “with direct knowledge of Trump’s finances” who estimated Trump’s net worth to be “between $150 million and $250 million.” Trump had told O’Brien, now editor of Bloomberg View, earlier that year that he was worth “five to six” billion. Trump responded by suing O’Brien and his publishers, Warner Book Group and Warner Books, for $5 billion. The lawsuit was dismissed in March 2009, and Trump lost a subsequent appeal.
One assumption of Trump’s secrecy is therefore that he does not want to admit that he is worth much less than he claims. Another is that returns will reveal questionable business transactions or sources of income.
When asked in a deposition if he had always been “completely truthful in all of your public statements about your home equity,” Trump replied, “I try.” He continued, “My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with my feelings, even my own feelings, but I try.”
The White House responded to the news with a statement accusing Rachel Maddow’s show of being “desperate for the ratings” and of breaking the law by obtaining and publishing the feedback.
Update: This story was updated with more accurate figures from the tax return after it went live.
