According to the documents, Trump and his wife Melania paid $38 million in total income tax, consisting of $5.3 million in regular federal income tax, and an additional $31 million of "alternative minimum tax," or AMT.
As the Beast notes, 2005 was the year that Trump, then a newly minted reality star, made his last big score as a real-life real estate developer, when he sold two properties, one on Manhattan's west side and one in San Francisco, to Hong Kong investors, accounting for the lion's share of his income that year.
"It is totally illegal to steal and publish tax returns," the White House statement concluded. "The dishonest media can continue to make this part of their agenda, while the President will focus on his, which includes tax reform that will benefit all Americans."
Comment: Maddow reveals Trump's 2005 tax return 1040 document
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has obtained an exclusive copy of President Donald Trump's tax returns from investigative reporter David Cay Johnston.
Maddow's Tuesday evening report referenced a report from the Palm Beach Post, alleging ties between Russian businessman Dmitry Rybolovlev and Trump.
Maddow also mentioned the firing of former US Attorney Preet Bharara, who refused to resign when instructed to do so last week. Bharara, who worked in the Manhattan district, was reportedly looking into Deutsche Bank over alleged Russian money laundering.
People are interested in Trump's tax returns, Maddow said, because they are asking, "What is his relationship with foreign sources of income?"
The MSNBC program built up the exclusive story's context for about 20 minutes before going to commercial break. Upon returning, Maddow held up two pages of Trump's 2005 tax form 1040, which she says first showed up in the mailbox of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston.
Maddow refuted the White House's claim that publishing the document was illegal. The First Amendment protects the right to show it to the public, Maddow stated. She did not challenge the White House's figures detailed in the tax document.
Johnston does not claim to know the source of the material.
"It's entirely possible that Donald sent this to me," Johnston said, claiming Trump's "long record" of leaking documents as reason to consider the possibility.
Johnston also said that Trump's return shows that he was still benefiting from the $916 million loss he reported in his 1995 return, which was published in the New York Times during the election.
Maddow then reiterated that the issue of Trump's tax return was important, because there were still questions of his sources of income and the integrity of his statements about his wealth.
But the real story here is that there is no story: what MSNBC confirmed is that Trump made more money than some of his critics said he made in the period in question, and more importantly, that he paid a generous effective income tax rate, well above the 14.1% rate paid by Mitt Romney, and even higher than the 13.5% federal tax rate paid by Bernie Sanders in 2014.
MSNBC's Rachel Maddow makes about $7 million annually. We would love to see her tax returns to see where she falls in comparison to Trump.
Comment: Remember When Hillary said Trump paid no taxes, hence the reason why, then candidate Trump did not release his tax returns...
During the September 26, 2016 presidential debate, Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speculated that one reason Donald Trump might not have released his tax returns is that"he doesn't want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes."Clinton said...
"So you've gotta ask yourself, why won't he release his tax returns? And I think there may be a couple of reasons. First, maybe he's not as rich as he says he is. Second, maybe he's not as charitable as he claims to be. Third, we don't know all of his business dealings, but we have been told, through investigative reporting that, he owes about $650 million to Wall Street and foreign banks. Or maybe he doesn't want the American people, all of you watching tonight, to know that he's paid nothing in federal taxes. Because the only years that anybody has ever seen, were a couple of years where he had to turn them over to state authorities when he was trying to get a casino license. And they showed he didn't pay any federal income tax."When it comes to taxes, maybe the liberal left should open up an investigation into the tax records of Obama, Sanders, and Comcast (the parent company of MSNBC)...
Sadly for Maddow, with this attempt at a "blockbuster" story which has quickly backfired, she may well have killed the great distraction that was the trope of Trump's tax returns, and which the rest of the "resistance" press hammered on every now and then.
Peak Stupidity! CNN and Michael Moore claim that Trump leaked his tax returns to distract from Russia and Obamacare
Clearly embarrassed by the Maddow nothing burger revelation that Trump's tax returns shows a businessman who paid the legal amount of taxes (and then some) to the US federal government.
The liberal left mainstream media is now trying to pivot away from Maddow's embarrassing failure by explaining that it was President Trump who released his own tax returns to "distract" the media from his "ties to Russia".
The hole being dug by the fake news mainstream media, the very dumb liberal left, and the very, very dumb Democrat Party is getting deeper and deeper by the day.
Soon we will hear that is was Russian President Putin who leaked Trump's tax returns.
Michael Moore is now also throwing out this ridiculous claim...
The "Russians are behind the tax leaks" madness is already being A/B tested, as Hannity explains...
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