Monday, May 16, 2016

A Brief History of Presidential Income Tax Returns



There are 2 candidates who refuse to release their income tax returns and one who has put a bunch of them online for everyone to analyze.

On one hand, I can empathize with not wanting to release them to the public.  There is a reason they are protected by very high standards at the IRS.  I appreciate that.

However, when you choose to run for President, you knew this was going to be expected.  If you are embarrassed, or have something to hide, you should have considered that before you started campaigning.  It is not hard to connect these dots - if you want to be President, have a tax return you are proud of and can withstand scrutiny by every tax expert in the country.

What really bugs me the most is that Trump and Sanders give BS answers that do not pass the reasonableness test.  They don't have the guts to come right out and be honest with us.

Bernie's wife does his taxes they claim and she can't find their copies.  Are you serious Mrs. Sanders?  You are so disorganized that you can not find your copies of the most basic documents of your family?  I'm sorry, people do not get to that level of success without having a personal filing system that can keep track of a multitude of documents - from medical records and car insurance to tax documents.  Unsuccessful people can't keep track of such things, but successful people do that kind of stuff automatically.  That's one of the reasons they are successful!



Trump says he is being audited for every year since 2009.  Uh, do you realize there is a statue of limitations on doing audits of 3 years?  They should not be auditing anything older than 2012.

Oh wait, did I forget about criminal activity?  If they suspect you of criminal activity they can go back another 4 years, or 7 years total.  Hmm, isn't it interesting how that coincides with the years Trump says he's being audited for?

LOL, in the interest of fairness, the IRS can ask you to extend the deadline for an audit, and you can agree to do that.  But, I certainly would not agree to it for as many years as he claims.

I think we have seen an inkling of Trump's problem.  His tax returns almost certainly contradict either what he has said publically, or given to others under oath (like the Nevada and New Jersey gaming commissions).

Some history I promised?  OK, while Nixon was in office, he took a charitable deduction for the fair market value of some property he gave to a charity.

The year he gave it, the laws on taking a deduction for land that had appreciated in value were changed.  Before a certain date, you could take the charitable deduction at the fair market value at the time of the gift without paying capital gains on the increase over your cost.  But after as specific date, like June 30, 1972 (I can't remember the exact date and don't want to look it up), you had to include the increase in value as taxable income before you could take the gift, or choose to only take your cost as the gift.

Nixon made a gift that was finalized after that date.  But he back dated the documents to show he made it before that important date. Some might call that forgery.  Others might call it fraud.  I would call it criminal fraud because it was in the amount of a few hundred thousand dollars and done specifically to lower his taxes.

Some of us were pretty upset over that because I had a client who gave a piece of land to Metro that year.  The Metro Council approved accepting the gift the Tuesday AFTER that specific date.  Of course, we did not have the ability to back date the Metro Council's meeting minutes.  As I remember, I argued we gave it to them, before the date, the fact that they took so long to officially accept it was their problem, not ours.  But I can't remember what my boss decided to have us do.

At any rate, most people understood that the President of the United States committed income tax fraud and that was the beginning of the end of respect for income tax laws.

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