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New York Times Claims POTUS Paid Only $750 in Taxes During First Year in Office, Trump Lawyer Says NYT Facts Are 'Inaccurate'

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President Donald Trump is disputing a New York Times report 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 Times reported Sunday.

More recently, 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 report, 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.

Speaking at a news conference Sunday at the White House, Trump dismissed the report as “fake news” and said he has paid taxes, though he gave no specifics. He also vowed that information about his taxes “will all be revealed,” but he offered no timeline for the disclosure and made similar promises during the 2016 campaign.

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The president has fielded court challenges against those seeking access to his returns, including the U.S. House, which is suing for access to Trump’s tax returns as part of congressional oversight.

During his first two years as president, Trump received $73 million from foreign operations, which in addition to his golf properties in Scotland and Ireland included $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey, The Times reported. The president in 2017 paid $145,400 in taxes in India and $156,824 in the Philippines, compared to just $750 in U.S. income taxes, according to The Times.

Trump has taken tax deductions on personal expenses such as housing, aircraft and $70,000 in haircare. Losses in the property businesses solely owned and managed by Trump appear to have offset income from his stake in the television show “The Apprentice” and other entities with multiple owners.

During the first two years of his presidency, Trump relied on business tax credits to reduce his tax obligations, according to the report. The Times said $9.7 million worth of business investment credits that were submitted after Trump requested an extension to file his taxes allowed him to reduce his income and pay just $750 each in 2016 and 2017.

Do you think this Times story was deliberately released just ahead of the Tuesday presidential debate?

Trump, starting in 2010, claimed and received an income tax refund that totaled $72.9 million, which The Times said was at the core of an ongoing audit by the IRS. The president has declined to release his taxes because of the audit.

A lawyer for the Trump Organization, Alan 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 Garten’s request for the tax filings in order to protect its sources.

During his first general election debate against Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Clinton said that perhaps Trump wasn’t releasing his tax returns because he had paid nothing in federal taxes.

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Trump interrupted her to say, “That makes me smart.”

The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.

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