Article by Newsmax Wires
Trump: New York Times Story on Taxes 'Fake News'
President Donald Trump denied a report that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, and repeated his stance to only share his tax returns after an audit is finished.
“First of all, I’ve paid a lot and I’ve paid a lot of state income taxes too,” Trump said during a news conference on Sunday after the New York Times released a detailed report saying the president had paid no income tax in 10 of the 15 years before he was elected.
“The story is a total fake,” he said.
Trump was responding to a New York Times report Sunday that he paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for president and in his first year in the White House.
Trump, who has fiercely guarded his tax filings and is the only president in modern times not to make them public, paid no federal income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years.
The details of the tax filings complicate Trump’s description of himself as a shrewd and patriotic businessman, revealing instead a series of financial losses and income from abroad that could come into conflict with his responsibilities as president. The president’s financial disclosures indicated he earned at least $434.9 million in 2018, but the tax filings reported a $47.4 million loss.
The disclosure, which the Times said comes from tax return data it obtained extending over two decades, comes at a pivotal moment ahead of the first presidential debate Tuesday and weeks before a divisive election against Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump vowed that information about his taxes "will all be revealed."
A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan Garten, and a spokesperson for the Trump Organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on the report.
Garten told the Times that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate.”
He said in a statement to the news organization that the president "has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.”
The New York Times said it declined to provide Garten with the tax filings in order to protect its sources.
https://www.newsmax.com/headline/trump-tax-returns/2020/09/27/id/989101/
