Read on Twitter
To go Full Tax Nerd on you: The laws which Donald Trump& #39;s accountants used to minimize/eliminate his income tax obligations are not new or unique. In fact, the problem is quite old and widespread to the point that the government has repeatedly attempted and failed to address it.
It& #39;s a political problem, exacerbated by the public perception of credits deductions. Us peons love our exemptions/deductions, which get us "tax refunds" at the end of the year (in effect, we& #39;re offering the gov& #39;t interest free use of our money the prior year but whatever).
But those exemptions/deductions are often aimed at Things Rich People Can Afford More Of: tuition, property, sales taxes on crap you buy, all those things you check "I don& #39;t know what that is" on Turbo Tax. Plus, they can afford to lobby for more of the same, which we cannot.
So by 1966, having created a Swiss cheese tax code giving out little favors to everyone by which the rich benefit disproportionately, 154 rich people had avoided paying any taxes at all. This was viewed as a problem. https://ia802608.us.archive.org/8/items/generalexplanati00jcs1670/generalexplanati00jcs1670.pdf">https://ia802608.us.archive.org/8/items/g...
(If you paid attention, you might note that that problems they identified in 1969 are EXACTLY THE SAME THINGS we fight about w/r/t rich people and taxes in 2020 and the same things in the Donald Trump tax story, by and large)
The solution was not, of course, to start plugging all those holes in the tax code and lower rates for lower/middle income households (lol) but rather to impose a surtax on rich people who had otherwise managed to avoid taxation to make sure they paid *something* at least.
(This, you might say, is a failure to learn the moral of the story, which is that smart accountants combined with an increasingly complex tax code the politicians barely understand themselves will inevitably result in rich people avoiding taxation entirely.)
The surtax limped along for about 15 years until, of course, increasingly rich people gamed it to once again avoid/minimize taxation. In the Reagan years, it was reformed to create an Alternative Minimum Taxation system, instead of a surtax: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44494.pdf">https://fas.org/sgp/crs/m...
(If you read deep into the NYT piece, you& #39;ll have noted that it was the existence of the AMT that eventually forced Trump to pay some taxes in the mid-aughts.)
This, about the Trump tax cuts, might then not surprise you. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/who-pays-amt">https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-...
(He also promised on the trail to repeal the AMT entirely : https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/promise/1428/repeal-alternative-minimum-tax/)">https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...
The AMT, though, wasn& #39;t fully repealed and, unless that happens, will be back in 2026: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/tax-cuts-and-jobs-act-and-zombie-amt">https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/ta...
The AM does suck because it is a symptom of the fact that our tax code incentivizes certain actions by allowing them to reduce your tax liability, and incentivizes more things that are readily available to the wealthy, reducing the progressive nature of our income tax system.
Essentially, it& #39;s a band-aid on a big problem that no one wants to solve because solving it requires eliminating the big deductions/exemptions/credits everyone gets and likes but by which the rich benefit disproportionately and which are HIGHLY VISIBLE once a year to voters.
So if you don& #39;t like how Trump mostly (from what I can tell from the NYT story) completely legally avoided paying taxes as most rich people/corporations do at anything near close to the rates you/I pay taxes, remember that when you salivate over your mortgage interest deduction.
