2016 Democratic Thread

[caulfield12]

10/4/16 Trump Scandal Count: 1

 

Trump Used Foundation Funds for 2016 Run, Filings Suggest

 

 

 

 

 

lmao Trump's entire empire collapsing and his brand name becoming worthless is how this is all gonna end, isn't it?

 

Ivanka's pissed because all of this is finally starting to hurt her own brand...much harder to sell clothing when 2/3rds of American women have come to intensely dislike your father.

 

It's not like right wing talk radio where intense loyalty from that 10-15% fringe element of the population can make up for it from a ratings perspective.

[Steve9347]

I LOL'd so hard.

[RockRaines]

People defending it also dont seem to understand the difference between a corporate loss and a personal loss. Without the full return I cant tell what is in statement 1, but we can likely assume that the loss derived from 2 events, the bankruptcies of Trump Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza, that were then reorganized into Trump Hotel & Casino Resorts in 1995. Most likely Trump owned stock in those 2 companies. When they went bankrupt there is a chance that the value of those stocks effectively became 0. The loss is actually likely not true. The stock was likely never worth $900mil.

 

Its all speculation, but I would bet not many individuals have ever claimed a loss that big.

Almost 1B in personal losses is a HUGE failure as a businessman. Its crazy stupid. The deeper people are able to dig the more you see he's a con-man. His father was a piece of s*** slum lord and Donald isnt far behind.

 

And LOL at Wikileaks

[StrangeSox]

Almost 1B in personal losses is a HUGE failure as a businessman. Its crazy stupid. The deeper people are able to dig the more you see he's a con-man. His father was a piece of s*** slum lord and Donald isnt far behind.

 

And LOL at Wikileaks

 

Lots (all?) of Trump's empire is organized as S-Corps, so profits and losses all flow through to the owner(s). If Trump Casino, S-Corp loses $10M in a given year, it's going to flow through to his personal returns. There are financial reasons to structure companies these ways but it'd been a while since I took 1 semester of business law and I'm sure Jason or any of the other financial guys could explain it way better.

[Chisoxfn]

Can you deduct those sorts of paper losses from the payroll tax?

No.

[Balta1701]

Ivanka's pissed because all of this is finally starting to hurt her own brand...much harder to sell clothing when 2/3rds of American women have come to intensely dislike your father.

 

It's not like right wing talk radio where intense loyalty from that 10-15% fringe element of the population can make up for it from a ratings perspective.

 

[bigruss]

I get detesting the right wing spin on it but if you (not you personally) think HRC isn't claiming losses too you're mistaken. Everybody who's as wealthy as these two has an accountant who's going to legally evade taxes as best they can. This is an industry. When presidential candidates do it people go nuts because they're uninformed (not you personally). I am sure if anyone here uses an accountant and he/she said, "You can use X to get a write-off" nobody would say, "No, I'd rather pay my fair share." Taxes are incredibly steep on the wealthy and the appropriation of them by our government is embarrassing. Power to Trump and HRC for taking advantage of the law that's made to protect the private citizens.

 

I don't care if Trump is super wealthy, or a scumbag or orange or whatever insult you can put next to him, he's still afforded the same rights as anyone else.

Sure, unfortunately he doesn't believe that.

[southsider2k5]

I get detesting the right wing spin on it but if you (not you personally) think HRC isn't claiming losses too you're mistaken. Everybody who's as wealthy as these two has an accountant who's going to legally evade taxes as best they can. This is an industry. When presidential candidates do it people go nuts because they're uninformed (not you personally). I am sure if anyone here uses an accountant and he/she said, "You can use X to get a write-off" nobody would say, "No, I'd rather pay my fair share." Taxes are incredibly steep on the wealthy and the appropriation of them by our government is embarrassing. Power to Trump and HRC for taking advantage of the law that's made to protect the private citizens.

 

I don't care if Trump is super wealthy, or a scumbag or orange or whatever insult you can put next to him, he's still afforded the same rights as anyone else.

 

They took a million dollars in charitable deductions in the last set of tax returns released, which means that was a million dollars they didn't pay taxes on. So no, they are not paying everything they could be paying either.

[StrangeSox]

I get detesting the right wing spin on it but if you (not you personally) think HRC isn't claiming losses too you're mistaken. Everybody who's as wealthy as these two has an accountant who's going to legally evade taxes as best they can. This is an industry. When presidential candidates do it people go nuts because they're uninformed (not you personally). I am sure if anyone here uses an accountant and he/she said, "You can use X to get a write-off" nobody would say, "No, I'd rather pay my fair share." Taxes are incredibly steep on the wealthy and the appropriation of them by our government is embarrassing. Power to Trump and HRC for taking advantage of the law that's made to protect the private citizens.

 

I don't care if Trump is super wealthy, or a scumbag or orange or whatever insult you can put next to him, he's still afforded the same rights as anyone else.

 

The Clintons have several decades of tax returns publicly available, and their effective tax rates are in the 30%'s.

 

Also LOL that "taxes are incredibly steep on the wealthy," get that nonsense out of the dem thread. You're talking about a man who's paid 0% for many years and who's a billionaire. You can look at Romney's tax returns from the 2012 race too.

 

There's doing your due diligence and there's trying to find every single trick and loophole in the book. There's a reason that you can still follow the exact letter of the law but still be found in violation due to very clearly violating the spirit of the law.

Edited October 4, 2016 by StrangeSox

[Soxbadger]

I get detesting the right wing spin on it but if you (not you personally) think HRC isn't claiming losses too you're mistaken. Everybody who's as wealthy as these two has an accountant who's going to legally evade taxes as best they can. This is an industry. When presidential candidates do it people go nuts because they're uninformed (not you personally). I am sure if anyone here uses an accountant and he/she said, "You can use X to get a write-off" nobody would say, "No, I'd rather pay my fair share." Taxes are incredibly steep on the wealthy and the appropriation of them by our government is embarrassing. Power to Trump and HRC for taking advantage of the law that's made to protect the private citizens.

 

I don't care if Trump is super wealthy, or a scumbag or orange or whatever insult you can put next to him, he's still afforded the same rights as anyone else.

 

Who has made this argument that Trump cant claim deductions?

 

Trump's entire campaign is based on his personal claim that he is a great successful businessman. Losing $900mil in a calendar year is not a "success" by most peoples definition. This has nothing to do with whether Trump should or should not have paid more taxes. That is the job of the IRS.

 

When you claim that you can do better because of your business experience, you should expect people are going to look at your business experience. I am not an accountant, but I would be a lot of money that most people who are considered "successful" have not lost a billion dollars in their life, let alone in a single calendar year.

 

Running the US govt isnt running a business. You cant just close it down and open under a new name. You cant just wave the magic bankruptcy wand and make your debts go away.

 

 

They took a million dollars in charitable deductions in the last set of tax returns released, which means that was a million dollars they didn't pay taxes on. So no, they are not paying everything they could be paying either.

 

 

We'd be having a much different discussion if the reason Trump's tax liability was reduced because he gave $900 mil in charitable deductions. Lets be honest, if Trump was actually successful and donated that type of money, hed likely be the next President.

 

But from all current evidence, Trump is not that successful nor that charitable. I mean come on, you are really going to compare losing $900mil, with voluntarily giving money away to charity. This is really where we are going?

 

[StrangeSox]

Yeah, instead, Trump rarely donates money to his own foundation and hasn't donated anything since 2008, illegally solicits funds from others, and appears to have used the foundation as his own personal slush fund on many, many occasions.

 

And even with taking that $1M deduction, the Clintons' effective tax rate is still 34-35% the last couple of years and historically is relatively high.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/hillary-clinto...rate-1471017626

 

“It’s striking that for a rich person, her tax return is very boring,” said Len Burman, director of the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank that specializes in tax issues, who was a Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. “She certainly could afford to pay people to help her figure out ways to avoid paying more in taxes.”

 

You can say that they're only doing this for political purposes, but they're still doing it.

Edited October 4, 2016 by StrangeSox

[Chisoxfn]

The Clintons have several decades of tax returns publicly available, and their effective tax rates are in the 30%'s.

 

Also LOL that "taxes are incredibly steep on the wealthy," get that nonsense out of the dem thread. You're talking about a man who's paid 0% for many years and who's a billionaire. You can look at Romney's tax returns from the 2012 race too.

 

There's doing your due diligence and there's trying to find every single trick and loophole in the book. There's a reason that you can still follow the exact letter of the law but still be found in violation due to very clearly violating the spirit of the law.

Romney still paid significant total $'s in taxes, his amount was lower than most Americans more so because a lot of his income at his stage of his life was driven by capital gains than it necessarily being tied to W-2 / 1099 ordinary type income (this is going off memory, but I believe that was the case).

[southsider2k5]

Who has made this argument that Trump cant claim deductions?

 

Trump's entire campaign is based on his personal claim that he is a great successful businessman. Losing $900mil in a calendar year is not a "success" by most peoples definition. This has nothing to do with whether Trump should or should not have paid more taxes. That is the job of the IRS.

 

When you claim that you can do better because of your business experience, you should expect people are going to look at your business experience. I am not an accountant, but I would be a lot of money that most people who are considered "successful" have not lost a billion dollars in their life, let alone in a single calendar year.

 

Running the US govt isnt running a business. You cant just close it down and open under a new name. You cant just wave the magic bankruptcy wand and make your debts go away.

 

 

 

 

 

We'd be having a much different discussion if the reason Trump's tax liability was reduced because he gave $900 mil in charitable deductions. Lets be honest, if Trump was actually successful and donated that type of money, hed likely be the next President.

 

But from all current evidence, Trump is not that successful nor that charitable. I mean come on, you are really going to compare losing $900mil, with voluntarily giving money away to charity. This is really where we are going?

 

The original argument centered on paying taxes, and avoiding taxes. I am glad to see the left wing finally admit the Mitt Romney was right though.

[Big Hurtin]

This is why the race is still close. The not paying federal taxes doesn't negatively impact him with his supporters. They aren't upset about it, but are envious that he was able to get away with it.

[StrangeSox]

Romney still paid significant total $'s in taxes, his amount was lower than most Americans more so because a lot of his income at his stage of his life was driven by capital gains than it necessarily being tied to W-2 / 1099 ordinary type income (this is going off memory, but I believe that was the case).

Yes, his rate was somewhere around 15% IIRC. His income being capital gains wasn't because of his stage in life though, his income was always primarily that through Bain.

 

edit: lots of people assume that he intentionally goosed his taxes to get his rate up to 15% for the one year he released so it didn't look quite as bad during his Presidential run.

Edited October 5, 2016 by StrangeSox

[Soxbadger]

The original argument centered on paying taxes, and avoiding taxes. I am glad to see the left wing finally admit the Mitt Romney was right though.

 

Excuse my ignorance but what is the Mitt Romney argument?

Edited October 5, 2016 by Soxbadger

[iamshack]

Governor Pence should be running for President instead of Trump.

[southsider2k5]

Governor Pence should be running for President instead of Trump.

 

As much as I despise Pence, I'd much rather see him elected than either Clinton or Trump.

[iamshack]

As much as I despise Pence, I'd much rather see him elected than either Clinton or Trump.

I don't know much about him...but he is a very skilled debater.

[StrangeSox]

He's extremely socially conservative.

[StrangeSox]

Kaine is channeling some reddy here, not a great look

[iamshack]

Kaine is channeling some reddy here, not a great look

He's clearly won the last 10 minutes though.

 

Pence struggling to deal with defending the Donald.

[The Beast]

Is any other voter terrified of Donald Trump becoming President? It seems more and more possible as each day goes by. It's rather frightening, if you ask me...and I am an independent voting for both sides this election.

[iamshack]

Right, but Pence was playing with an awful hand coming into this with Donald as his running mate.

 

Thought Pence was solid, things got even toward the end, but Pence looked good.

Yeah, I completely agree. Pence was the more polished debater, but his unwillingness to address many of Trump's nonsensical statements will catch up with him as the week goes on.

 

Ultimately, again, this should be nothing new for anyone.

[iamshack]

Is any other voter terrified of Donald Trump becoming President? It seems more and more possible as each day goes by. It's rather frightening, if you ask me...and I am an independent voting for both sides this election.

My best friend...the man and his father that I named my son after...two very intelligent, rational, reasonable, good people....actually support Trump.

 

It has more to do with the state of our political system than with the candidate they support.

 

At least that's what I keep telling myself.