Donald Trump probably hasn't paid income taxes in 20 years.
He did this by "losing" a BILLION dollars running casinos in 1995. Casinos. You know...that business where people just show up and give you their money.
He still made 10's of millions for himself though, but the way how the tax codes are written, he could leverage those business losses against his personal income...so he doesn't have to pay any taxes.
Frankly, he's right. He didn't do anything illegal. He took advantage of tax loopholes to make sure that he, the "billionaire" didn't pay anymore tax than he had to. The way the rules are written...that means he most likely hasn't had to pay any.
That's a problem.
If Trump were an honest broker, he would've went on the attack and released his tax returns on his own and cited his own tax privilege as an example of what makes the system unfair for everyone. Much like when Warren Buffet said his secretary pays more in taxes than he does and the laws should change.
But he didn't. He lied and said he's not releasing them because he's being audited, despite the IRS saying that an audit doesn't preclude one from releasing their previous tax returns.
Trump voters are already defending him, glossing over his duplicity and saying he's going to fix it...despite his tax plan not mentioning anything about fixing things like this. They consistently give him the benefit of the doubt, despite him showing that he doesn't deserve it. And that's because most of them are racists. And racists loveeee giving other White people the benefit of the doubt. That's called White Privilege.
The fact of the matter is, Donald Trump is the EXACT same kind of guy responsible for White, middle class Americans earning less than they ever have, but he's rising to power by blaming the Black guy, Muslims & Mexicans.
Leveraging White racism, while embodying the EXACT same kind of policies that are responsible for those same poorer White people, not feeling so great about their country.
This is an old play from an old play book.
You see, slavery has been around for millenia. But In the US, there were two types of enslavement: chattle slavery, that was for Africans and indentured servitude (debt slavery) for Europeans.
When slave uprisings would happen, the indentured servants (poor White people) would often join them.
Then came the Virginia Slave Codes. Basically rich White people gave more rights to poor White people, stripped even more rights from enslaved Africans and told the White people "Hey. Why are you siding with them for? At least you're not a Nigger". And it worked.
Juxtapose that with a "Billionaire" who was personally responsible for 1.9% of ALL the Net Operating Losses in the US (a country with 300,000,000 people) in 1995 (running CASINOS, when the entire stock market was up 37% that year), who then leveraged those "losses" to go on to not paying taxes himself for another 20 years!
Donald Trump is running one of the oldest cons in the world. Fuck something up, leverage racism to distract from it. Profit. Shame on those who don't see it for what it is.
KB