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Official Hillary Clinton 2016 thread (8 Viewers)

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So the guy with boloney a avatar and the the moron with a Hillary avatar agree on something...fitting.

 
Seriously....why does ANYONE care about a person's taxes?  It's no secret the more money you make the more loopholes our government provides for keeping that money.  It's also no secret that NONE OF US would forego taking advantage of those loopholes if it was our money, but we expect our politicians to?  I sure don't.  This is exactly why I laugh when any politician says they are going to change the income tax rates to make them more progressive.  Most wealthy people don't have money that is considered income.  Changing that rate means very little to rich people and doesn't affect them all that much compared to their wealth.  It's a hollow platitude.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
Baloney Sandwich said:
The real issue isn't what provisions the accountants that work for Trump and Clinton utilized, it is the length and complexity of our federal tax code and regulations.
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I'm guessing there are some hyper wealthy people who are plenty angry at Trump for bringing this front and center.
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This isn't news is it? :oldunsure:  

Seems like the very definition of "water is wet" or "squis loves him some twitter and lazy logic" type of information.

 
The Commish said:
Seriously....why does ANYONE care about a person's taxes?  It's no secret the more money you make the more loopholes our government provides for keeping that money.  It's also no secret that NONE OF US would forego taking advantage of those loopholes if it was our money, but we expect our politicians to?  I sure don't.  This is exactly why I laugh when any politician says they are going to change the income tax rates to make them more progressive.  Most wealthy people don't have money that is considered income.  Changing that rate means very little to rich people and doesn't affect them all that much compared to their wealth.  It's a hollow platitude.
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The Commish said:
This isn't news is it? :oldunsure:  

Seems like the very definition of "water is wet" or "squis loves him some twitter and lazy logic" type of information.
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I guess you're right, catching Trump in this gotcha moment seems to have risen to the holy grail of the campaign, of all things, I guess because Trump himself has withheld his returns, so speculation gets ramped up. Of course the Clintons are very wealthy too so they probably have a lot of the same things lurking. No one has bothered with ZFS Holdings LLC or WJC LLC returns, have they? They probably have the same issues with unsavory entanglements that Trump's returns do.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
The Clintons took advantage of the same long term capital loss provision that Trump did:

$700,000 - page 17.
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1) How do we know it's the same provision when we don't have the supporting docs for Trump's claimed Billion Dollar Loss?

2) Even if it was the same provision, the Clintons reported the $700k loss, but actually took only a $3000 deduction (page 1 line 13) in their income of over $10 million (page 1 line 12).  So for that $700,000 loss they got a tax reduction of less than $1000.  They still paid over $3,000,000 in taxes

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
The Commish said:
Seriously....why does ANYONE care about a person's taxes?  It's no secret the more money you make the more loopholes our government provides for keeping that money.  It's also no secret that NONE OF US would forego taking advantage of those loopholes if it was our money, but we expect our politicians to?  I sure don't.  This is exactly why I laugh when any politician says they are going to change the income tax rates to make them more progressive.  Most wealthy people don't have money that is considered income.  Changing that rate means very little to rich people and doesn't affect them all that much compared to their wealth.  It's a hollow platitude.
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The Commish said:
This isn't news is it? :oldunsure:  

Seems like the very definition of "water is wet" or "squis loves him some twitter and lazy logic" type of information.
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I guess you're right, catching Trump in this gotcha moment seems to have risen to the holy grail of the campaign, of all things, I guess because Trump himself has withheld his returns, so speculation gets ramped up. Of course the Clintons are very wealthy too so they probably have a lot of the same things lurking. No one has bothered with ZFS Holdings LLC or WJC LLC returns, have they? They probably have the same issues with unsavory entanglements that Trump's returns do.
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But the "speculation" here isn't any more than rich people taking advantage of the tax code they've helped form.  In this case, Hillary's been in a position to affect that tax code and it's fairness.  Trump has not.  Of course, if something illegal is found, then that's a different story, but "not paying federal taxes for X years" isn't illegal.  It's the way the tax code is set up and we'd all take advantage of it if we were in position to do so.  We'd be stupid not to.

 
Mr. Ham said:
Go Gowdy.  And this doesn't even consider the Reddit revelations that there was an active effort to destroy evidence, or the contents of what was destroyed and why.

https://youtu.be/39ZD5yin3jI

Fortunately, Gowdy will not let this go.
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I guess this is one last bit I have been meaning to follow up on, the hearing with Comey.

We know now about the agreement to not investigate anything after 1/1/15, which precluded any sort of efforts to obstruct justice, considering the server was revealed to the public and the subpoenas was issued in March of 2015.

The other aspect of the agreement is that it only makes sense if it is believed that the parties knew and understood that there was classified information on the laptops, then yes they would have to be destroyed. But if that is the case then it is also an acceptance of the parties - including Mills and Samuelson who were working at the behest of Hillary - that they knew and understood that fact, so that is an automatic admission of intent. Knowing that they were holding classified information without authorization and in unauthjorized locations was in and of itself a crime. Comey himself said that the only reason that they did not prosecute was because of lack of intent. Here intent is proven.

Now it is true that no data was destroyed during the investigation itself, but given that, establishing 1/1/15 as the cutoff date makes zero sense since the investigation would have begun with the IG referral which was during the summer. The only reason to ask for 1/1/15 was that there must have been some concern about activity between then and the beginning of the year. And we do know there was destruction of data during that time.

Couple more notes:

It was also “very unusual,” according to Comey, that the FBI would conduct an interview with the target of an investigation — where wholly innocent Hillary Clinton was surrounded by nine lawyers — with two of the immunized witnesses in the case present. That’s something Comey admitted had never happened in his career.
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http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/28/nothing-james-comey-says-about-hillary-investigation-makes-sense/#.V-wSz2mSaKA.twitter

- I haven't seen any transcripts, so this will have to do, but Comey's actual testimony on this, which may be in your clip, is amazing because he actually stammers during answering if he had ever seen such an arrangement where someone was given immunity on the one hand and then also allowed to come in and act as a lawyer with privilege attached on the other, especially when that person i a subject of the investigation and was also not acting as lawyer at the time of the alleged crime.

Comey attempted to distance himself from the immunity deals by pointing out that he had not personally struck them. “It’s a decision made by the Department of Justice, I don’t know at what level inside,” Comey said in House panel. “In our investigations, any kind of immunity comes from the prosecutors, not the investigators.”
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- For me that is the real takeaway. The DOJ 1. accepted privilege by those acting in concert and so key events were excluded from investigation, and 2. immunity was granted to key players, including those just one degree from the TARGET, Hillary Clinton, with zero expectation that they cooperate while also again excluding their testimony from use in any case against the target or themselves, and 3. destruction of evidence after the public revelation of their acts was also precluded from investigation.

So I really do not blame Comey. Here he is stuck in the position of throwing his own department under the bus and he is not going to do that. But what he said was true, how could he find Hillary had intent when all avenues for proving intent were blocked by his own AG and his own department? Really the only thing for him to do there was resign. I guess if I blame him for anything it is that, but that is a lot to ask of a man, to throw himself on his sword in a history making demonstration while he destroys his career. It's a lot to ask.

I do give Comey a lot of credit for releasing the notes, for digging up and releasing the deleted emails, and for his presser and for his two hearings. He has put as much out there as he can. And overall his hands were tied by how is own AG.

But IMO this is the final line on what happened, kabuki theatre complete.

 
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The Commish said:
Seriously....why does ANYONE care about a person's taxes?  It's no secret the more money you make the more loopholes our government provides for keeping that money.  It's also no secret that NONE OF US would forego taking advantage of those loopholes if it was our money, but we expect our politicians to?  I sure don't.  This is exactly why I laugh when any politician says they are going to change the income tax rates to make them more progressive.  Most wealthy people don't have money that is considered income.  Changing that rate means very little to rich people and doesn't affect them all that much compared to their wealth.  It's a hollow platitude.
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I agree that the people hammering Trump for not paying taxes on that money are going down the wrong path. Given the laws in place, I don't really take issue with minimizing his payments.

The part that offends me isn't that he didn't pay taxes, but that while he is writing off all of these losses he is also bemoaning how much of the tax burden the rich have to bear, whining about the lack of taxes paid by the poorer half, and proposing that we cut the highest tax brackets.

 
igbomb said:
I agree that the people hammering Trump for not paying taxes on that money are going down the wrong path. Given the laws in place, I don't really take issue with minimizing his payments.

The part that offends me isn't that he didn't pay taxes, but that while he is writing off all of these losses he is also bemoaning how much of the tax burden the rich have to bear, whining about the lack of taxes paid by the poorer half, and proposing that we cut the highest tax brackets.
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Agreed...it's a pretty stupid position to take.

 
igbomb said:
I agree that the people hammering Trump for not paying taxes on that money are going down the wrong path. Given the laws in place, I don't really take issue with minimizing his payments.

The part that offends me isn't that he didn't pay taxes, but that while he is writing off all of these losses he is also bemoaning how much of the tax burden the rich have to bear, whining about the lack of taxes paid by the poorer half, and proposing that we cut the highest tax brackets.
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Hillary won't be eliminating that tax provision, considering that the rich really don't care if she raises their taxes another 3% if she and they know they don't have taxable income in the first place. Hillary wiped 700K off her return herself.

 
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The tax news is hurting Donald Trump because he has to defend it. Anytime Trump is in the defensive, that's bad for him and good for Hillary. 

There are some other concerning signs, however. In Iowa, early voting registration is down for Dema from 2012, which may indicate an enthusiasm gap. 

 
randall146 said:
SaintsInDome2006 said:
The Clintons took advantage of the same long term capital loss provision that Trump did:

$700,000 - page 17.
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1) How do we know it's the same provision when we don't have the supporting docs for Trump's claimed Billion Dollar Loss?

2) Even if it was the same provision, the Clintons reported the $700k loss, but actually took only a $3000 deduction (page 1 line 13) in their income of over $10 million (page 1 line 12).  So for that $700,000 loss they got a tax reduction of less than $1000.  They still paid over $3,000,000 in taxes
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1. It's a long term capital loss. Isn't that what Trump used?

2. Yep, you're right, I agree. However I note in that same line it says they can only take the smaller of their claimed loss (700K) or 3K. So why was Trump himself not limited to this? Or was he?

Also, what was the Clintons 700K loss from, do we know?

 
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What if he broke the rules to minimize his payments? The "he could have exploited the rules and not paid personal income taxes for many years" thing is just the opening to questions about how exactly he did it (and we still don't have actual evidence that he did). Not that I expect those questions to be answered. Trump has nothing to gain by releasing returns at this point.

 
timschochet said:
The tax news is hurting Donald Trump because he has to defend it. Anytime Trump is in the defensive, that's bad for him and good for Hillary. 

There are some other concerning signs, however. In Iowa, early voting registration is down for Dema from 2012, which may indicate an enthusiasm gap. 
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That Hillary does not generate enthusiasm has been one of her known flaws since before she announced her candidacy. That's one reason why Trump is such a cure-all for her.

 
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The Commish said:
Seriously....why does ANYONE care about a person's taxes?  It's no secret the more money you make the more loopholes our government provides for keeping that money.  It's also no secret that NONE OF US would forego taking advantage of those loopholes if it was our money, but we expect our politicians to?  I sure don't.  This is exactly why I laugh when any politician says they are going to change the income tax rates to make them more progressive.  Most wealthy people don't have money that is considered income.  Changing that rate means very little to rich people and doesn't affect them all that much compared to their wealth.  It's a hollow platitude.
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I think maybe you're missing the point of the tax revelation. It's not necessarily about whether he paid his "fair share" or not. It's that his #1 selling point has been his business acumen- in fact that was his explanation when Clinton wondered if that was what he was hiding during the debate ("that's called 'business,' by the way").  The revelation has renewed focus on just how much of a fraud he really is, how he inherited a fortune (I saw a stat that over 40% of voters still think he's a self-made man), ran several businesses into the ground, and then used those losses to avoid taxes for two decades while he rebuilt his fortune through branding efforts and sales pitches to idiots. It ruins his pitch as a business whiz and a job creator ... and what does that leave him, really?

And by the way, tax deductions aren't black and white, legal or illegal. There's always some ambiguity about how far you are willing to stretch the law to reduce your burden, or in Trump's case increase your reported losses. We might all take the deductions that are clearly available to us, but not many of us would push the outer limits of the law and invite audits and penalties to run up a massive loss we could carry forward for two decades.  Trump almost certainly did this, given the size of the claimed loss.

To that effect, here's an amazing fact from a Times follow-up article on the issue:

More than 500,000 individual taxpayers took advantage of the same tax rule as Mr. Trump in 1995, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The average loss they claimed, however, was just $97,600. Mr. Trump’s $916 million loss accounted for almost 2 percent of the national total.
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There's also the question of whether his existing tax proposal is in his self-interest rather than what's best for voters. If he's proposing something that allows people like him to continue to do things like this- or to do it even more profitably- at the expense of middle-class taxpayers, voters have a right to know that he's lying when he says he has their best interests in mind.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
That Hillary does not generate enthusiasm has been one of her known flaws since before she announced her candidacy. That's one reason why Trump is such a cure-all for her.
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It's incredible really...Trump is the one person who can make people enthusiastic about voting for Hillary.

 
pantagrapher said:
What if he broke the rules to minimize his payments? The "he could have exploited the rules and not paid personal income taxes for many years" thing is just the opening to questions about how exactly he did it (and we still don't have actual evidence that he did). Not that I expect those questions to be answered. Trump has nothing to gain by releasing returns at this point.
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Its a commonly used tax rule. I think 500k people also took advantage of the same tax rule in 1995, now granted the average was like 97k and not 900m+ that Trump took as a business loss. Why do you think he broke rules?

 
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Someone making usage of loopholes that need closing cannot be trusted to close them.  Neither really can the politicians on their payroll like Hillary.

 
ArbyMelt said:
Its a commonly used tax rule. I think 500k people also took advantage of the same tax rule in 1995, now granted the average was like 97k and not 900m+ that Trump took as a business loss. Why do you think he broke rules?
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Why would you think that he hasn't, given his business career as a whole and the fact that he is still refusing to release his returns? If there was nothing shady in there, and the picture that the returns would paint would serve to reinforce his "I'm a brilliant businessman" narrative, why hasn't he been waving them around in public since day one?

 
pantagrapher said:
What if he broke the rules to minimize his payments? The "he could have exploited the rules and not paid personal income taxes for many years" thing is just the opening to questions about how exactly he did it (and we still don't have actual evidence that he did). Not that I expect those questions to be answered. Trump has nothing to gain by releasing returns at this point.
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I think....I THINK....that falls under the words "now, if he did something illegal, that's a different story", which has been said several times, but I'll have to defer to the judges. :popcorn:  

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
1. It's a long term capital loss. Isn't that what Trump used?

2. Yep, you're right, I agree. However I note in that same line it says they can only take the smaller of their claimed loss (700K) or 3K. So why was Trump himself not limited to this? Or was he?

Also, what was the Clintons 700K loss from, do we know?
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1) We don't know.  Doesn't seem like it to me, but the law and forms may have been different back then.

2) He may have been, we don't know

3) We don't know.  Long-term Capital Losses are often real estate or stocks sold at a loss.  And as far as I know long term capital losses can only be used for tax purposes to offset long term capital gains (the same way gambling losses can only offset gambling gains).  This is another reason I doubt that Trump's billion dollar loss was long-term capital loss - because if so he could only use it in ensuing years to offset long-term capital gains, not taxes on ordinary income.

I'm far from a tax or capital gains expert, so it's pretty lame that I could debunk the claim that Trump and Clinton used the same provision in the same way in only a few minutes, just by reading the actual tax returns.  Where'd you hear about this bombshell?

 
ArbyMelt said:
Its a commonly used tax rule. I think 500k people also took advantage of the same tax rule in 1995, now granted the average was like 97k and not 900m+ that Trump took as a business loss. Why do you think he broke rules?
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I didn't say I think he broke the rules. It's possible, but we don't have enough information to know what he did. "It's a commonly used tax rule" is not evidence of anything. 

 
This is probably getting into the weeds a bit too much for most folks, but here's an article in Tax Notes Today today on the likely strategy.  It was mostly shut down by Congress in 2002, but Trump's basis bump would have been grandfathered.

News Analysis: The Donald's Double Dip?




Posted on Oct. 4, 2016
It's bizarre that a single page of a two-decade-old New York state income tax return could provide a Rosetta stone explanation of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's tax situation, but it appears to do so.


The New York Times, which revealed the leaked state tax return pages, presented two theories for the $916 million loss reported on the return: net operating loss carryovers and abandonment (The New York Times, Oct. 2, 2016, p. A1). Neither is an adequate explanation, which is more likely to have to do with debt forgiveness and S corporation rules. This is because of where the bulk of the loss was reported on his New York state income tax return.

New York state return income lines parallel federal income tax return income lines. There is a line for current NOLs and a line for losses passed through from partnerships and S corporations (which shows a $16 million loss). Of Trump's total loss, $909 million appears on the "other income" line, which is where cancellation of debt (COD) income and unused NOL carryovers are reported. What he may well have is a big slug of unused NOLs freed up by a big COD income item.

In the 1990s, Trump had three Atlantic City, New Jersey, casinos and an airline, all of which were hemorrhaging money. There was $3 billion of debt on these assets, $832 million of which was personally guaranteed by him. Lenders forgave the $832 million debt in 1995, the year of the disclosed state tax return. That would have produced a huge COD income item, which might have been excluded. Putting together the loan workout with the similar size of the number on the other income line, loan-related loss is a likely explanation.

Why doesn't the COD income appear on the state return? Here's what we assume would have been his structure, because it was a common structure at the time. We assume that he entered the partnerships that owned the casinos using his own S corporation as partner. That S corporation probably was the general partner. An S corporation is a corporation under state law.

As general partner, that S corporation may have been allocated more losses in the form of interest expenses, operating expenses, and depreciation deductions than it could use against the three casinos' insufficient income. Once the income was exhausted, losses could be applied to reduce the owner's basis in the S corporation shares, but it is likely that basis was small. Passthrough of losses is limited to the shareholder's basis in S corporation shares (section 1363(d)).

When the debt was forgiven at the S corporation level, it would have produced a basis bump to Trump as sole shareholder so that unused losses could be used, even if the S corporation qualified for a COD income exclusion because it was insolvent or filed bankruptcy. It probably would have invoked one of those COD income exclusions (section 108(a)(1)(A), (B)). That basis bump would have enabled him to use the resulting loss overhang in perpetuity to offset his income. Essentially, the basis increase allowed the unused NOLs to flow through to the shareholder and avoided attribute reduction because the NOLs were no longer in the corporation.

Gee, shouldn't there have been a suspension of related tax attributes? Not under the law at the time. The Supreme Court held in 2001 that the law literally permitted this apparent double dip result (Gitlitz v. Commissioner, 531 U.S. 206 (2001) http://www.taxnotes.com/tax-notes-t...h-circuit-s-corpdoi-issues/2001/01/10/5357171). Congress reversed the decision in 2002, grandfathering basis bumps incurred before the date of enactment, so Trump would have been grandfathered (section 108(d)(7)). (Prior analysis: Tax Notes, Jan. 29, 2001, p. 577 http://www.taxnotes.com/tax-notes-t...nsolvent-s-corp-double-dip/2001/01/29/5376601.)

What happened to the taxpayer in Gitlitz helps explain what probably happened to Trump. Gitlitz and another individual were shareholders in an S corporation that incurred $2 million of COD income in 1991. Because the S corporation was insolvent, it was allowed to exclude the COD income. The two shareholders increased their bases in their shares by the amount of the excluded COD income (section 1366(a)(1)(A)). They used the basis increase to offset income from prior years (section 1366(d)). That is, COD income that had been excluded was replicated in a basis increase.

The IRS argued that the COD income should reduce the S corporation's basis in its assets -- effectively confining it to the corporate level (reg. section 1.1366-1(a)(2)(viii)). But the Court stuck with the literal wording of the law, which did not spell out that result at the time. The excluded COD income was not specifically removed from income items of an S corporation, so it would have caused a basis bump (section 1367(a)). The shareholders could use associated NOLs (section 1366(a)(1)(A)).

The requirement that tax attributes be reduced also did not apply at the corporate level (sections 108(b), (d)). As the Court noted, S corporation losses would be reduced eventually, at the shareholder level, but in the meantime the shareholders could use their bumped-up basis to offset income. And because the basis increase equaled the associated losses, which were passed through to the shareholders, there would be no NOLs left to reduce in the future, as the Court explained. The Court recognized that it was not a desirable policy result, but it was Congress's job to change it.

The Donald wouldn't have been the only beneficiary of this highly literal reading of the tax law. Leaving aside casino cannibalization in Atlantic City, the early 1990s saw a commercial real estate bust proximately caused by overbuilding and the removal of tax benefits under the Tax Reform Act of 1986. There were a lot of bad loans, debt forgiveness, and debtors maneuvering around COD income hits.

Richard M. Lipton of Baker & McKenzie, who represents real estate developers, explained that an S corporation as general partner was a common setup at the time. He noted that more than one individual using an S corporation benefited from the Gitlitz interpretation -- and was shielded from taxes for the rest of his life. Lipton contributed technical assistance to this article.

How could Trump continue to live like a king while his casinos were in bankruptcy and he was working out debts with his lenders? His lenders put him on an allowance of $450,000 per month, understanding that his lifestyle was important to the maintenance of the Trump brand. Like Ralph Lauren, Trump sells a fantasy version of his own lifestyle. (The Wall Street Journal, Oct. 2, 2016.)

That's not to say that this isn't political fodder even if it was completely within the law at the time. Speaking in Toledo, Ohio, as this article was being written, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton promised punishment for those who rip off the tax code. She added that letting Trump rewrite the tax law would be like letting a fox guard the henhouse. Zero is still zero, even if it is normal for real estate developers. (Prior analysis: Tax Notes, Aug. 22, 2016, p. 1053 http://www.taxnotes.com/tax-notes-t...reluctant-conservationist/2016/08/22/18575586.)
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randall146 said:
1) We don't know.  Doesn't seem like it to me, but the law and forms may have been different back then.

2) He may have been, we don't know

3) We don't know.  Long-term Capital Losses are often real estate or stocks sold at a loss.  And as far as I know long term capital losses can only be used for tax purposes to offset long term capital gains (the same way gambling losses can only offset gambling gains).  This is another reason I doubt that Trump's billion dollar loss was long-term capital loss - because if so he could only use it in ensuing years to offset long-term capital gains, not taxes on ordinary income.

I'm far from a tax or capital gains expert, so it's pretty lame that I could debunk the claim that Trump and Clinton used the same provision in the same way in only a few minutes, just by reading the actual tax returns.  Where'd you hear about this bombshell?
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It's hardly a bombshell. Picked it up in a line from a Fortune article this morning and the Clinton returns have been online for some time, to their credit. Fortune made the same point you did but I did not notice it.

It's possible that the laws changed, but if that's the case then I'm guessing if the full 700K writeoff was available to the Clintons they would have taken advantage of it too.

Still wondering what the Clintons do to generate a 700K loss though.

-eta - you're right (again) on the Clintons having used a different provision, they used a long term capital loss while Trump was using a net operating loss (NOL).

 
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SaintsInDome2006 said:
It's hardly a bombshell. Picked it up in a line from a Fortune article this morning and the Clinton returns have been online for some time, to their credit.

It's possible that the laws changed, but if that's the case then I'm guessing if the full 700K writeoff was available to the Clintons they would have taken advantage of it too.

Still wondering what the Clintons do to generate a 700K loss though.
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probably a real estate deal

 
randall146 said:
This is another reason I doubt that Trump's billion dollar loss was long-term capital loss - because if so he could only use it in ensuing years to offset long-term capital gains, not taxes on ordinary income.
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Someone else raised this but I'd also like to know how the loss jumped from a corporate one to a personal one.

 
TobiasFunke said:
The Commish said:
Seriously....why does ANYONE care about a person's taxes?  It's no secret the more money you make the more loopholes our government provides for keeping that money.  It's also no secret that NONE OF US would forego taking advantage of those loopholes if it was our money, but we expect our politicians to?  I sure don't.  This is exactly why I laugh when any politician says they are going to change the income tax rates to make them more progressive.  Most wealthy people don't have money that is considered income.  Changing that rate means very little to rich people and doesn't affect them all that much compared to their wealth.  It's a hollow platitude.
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I think maybe you're missing the point of the tax revelation. It's not necessarily about whether he paid his "fair share" or not. It's that his #1 selling point has been his business acumen- in fact that was his explanation when Clinton wondered if that was what he was hiding during the debate ("that's called 'business,' by the way").  The revelation has renewed focus on just how much of a fraud he really is, how he inherited a fortune (I saw a stat that over 40% of voters still think he's a self-made man), ran several businesses into the ground, and then used those losses to avoid taxes for two decades while he rebuilt his fortune through branding efforts and sales pitches to idiots. It ruins his pitch as a business whiz and a job creator ... and what does that leave him, really?

And by the way, tax deductions aren't black and white, legal or illegal. There's always some ambiguity about how far you are willing to stretch the law to reduce your burden, or in Trump's case increase your reported losses. We might all take the deductions that are clearly available to us, but not many of us would push the outer limits of the law and invite audits and penalties to run up a massive loss we could carry forward for two decades.  Trump almost certainly did this, given the size of the claimed loss.

To that effect, here's an amazing fact from a Times follow-up article on the issue:

More than 500,000 individual taxpayers took advantage of the same tax rule as Mr. Trump in 1995, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The average loss they claimed, however, was just $97,600. Mr. Trump’s $916 million loss accounted for almost 2 percent of the national total.
Click to expand...
There's also the question of whether his existing tax proposal is in his self-interest rather than what's best for voters. If he's proposing something that allows people like him to continue to do things like this- or to do it even more profitably- at the expense of middle-class taxpayers, voters have a right to know that he's lying when he says he has their best interests in mind.
Click to expand...
I see and hear everything you're saying here and I don't disagree with any of it.  I am 100% confident the average American isn't.  So when I ask the question, it's from that perspective.  If we're being honest, people have made up their minds and those that say they haven't aren't going to get the nuance you propose here.  They just aren't.  It shines a light on those stories and his past again.  That's not new information though.  People have heard these things a few times already and have made decisions based on what they've heard.  And if they haven't made a decision based on them the first 10 times, why is it important to focus on (what seems to be) something not all that important to their decision making an 11th time?

I do have a question though.  Do we even know what provision he used?  randall146 is asking this same question.  I don't know the answer, but I don't know how we would know the context of this deduction cost without seeing his returns.

 
SaintsInDome2006 said:
I guess this is one last bit I have been meaning to follow up on, the hearing with Comey.

We know now about the agreement to not investigate anything after 1/1/15, which precluded any sort of efforts to obstruct justice, considering the server was revealed to the public and the subpoenas was issued in March of 2015.

The other aspect of the agreement is that it only makes sense if it is believed that the parties knew and understood that there was classified information on the laptops, then yes they would have to be destroyed. But if that is the case then it is also an acceptance of the parties - including Mills and Samuelson who were working at the behest of Hillary - that they knew and understood that fact, so that is an automatic admission of intent. Knowing that they were holding classified information without authorization and in unauthjorized locations was in and of itself a crime. Comey himself said that the only reason that they did not prosecute was because of lack of intent. Here intent is proven.

Now it is true that no data was destroyed during the investigation itself, but given that, establishing 1/1/15 as the cutoff date makes zero sense since the investigation would have begun with the IG referral which was during the summer. The only reason to ask for 1/1/15 was that there must have been some concern about activity between then and the beginning of the year. And we do know there was destruction of data during that time.

Couple more notes:

http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/28/nothing-james-comey-says-about-hillary-investigation-makes-sense/#.V-wSz2mSaKA.twitter

- I haven't seen any transcripts, so this will have to do, but Comey's actual testimony on this, which may be in your clip, is amazing because he actually stammers during answering if he had ever seen such an arrangement where someone was given immunity on the one hand and then also allowed to come in and act as a lawyer with privilege attached on the other, especially when that person i a subject of the investigation and was also not acting as lawyer at the time of the alleged crime.

- For me that is the real takeaway. The DOJ 1. accepted privilege by those acting in concert and so key events were excluded from investigation, and 2. immunity was granted to key players, including those just one degree from the TARGET, Hillary Clinton, with zero expectation that they cooperate while also again excluding their testimony from use in any case against the target or themselves, and 3. destruction of evidence after the public revelation of their acts was also precluded from investigation.

So I really do not blame Comey. Here he is stuck in the position of throwing his own department under the bus and he is not going to do that. But what he said was true, how could he find Hillary had intent when all avenues for proving intent were blocked by his own AG and his own department? Really the only thing for him to do there was resign. I guess if I blame him for anything it is that, but that is a lot to ask of a man, to throw himself on his sword in a history making demonstration while he destroys his career. It's a lot to ask.

I do give Comey a lot of credit for releasing the notes, for digging up and releasing the deleted emails, and for his presser and for his two hearings. He has put as much out there as he can. And overall his hands were tied by how is own AG.

But IMO this is the final line on what happened, kabuki theatre complete.
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Excellent analysis.  

 
The Commish said:
I see and hear everything you're saying here and I don't disagree with any of it.  I am 100% confident the average American isn't.  So when I ask the question, it's from that perspective.  If we're being honest, people have made up their minds and those that say they haven't aren't going to get the nuance you propose here.  They just aren't.  It shines a light on those stories and his past again.  That's not new information though.  People have heard these things a few times already and have made decisions based on what they've heard.  And if they haven't made a decision based on them the first 10 times, why is it important to focus on (what seems to be) something not all that important to their decision making an 11th time?

I do have a question though.  Do we even know what provision he used?  randall146 is asking this same question.  I don't know the answer, but I don't know how we would know the context of this deduction cost without seeing his returns.
Click to expand...
I disagree, I think there are a lot more undecided voters right now then there have been at this point in previous elections.  Nate Silver has made this point too, it's why his model shows a much lower chance of winning for Clinton with a 3 point lead than it showed for Obama with a three point lead around this time four years ago- more undecideds and third party supporters = more variance.

And as I said I think there are still people who think Trump is a great businessman who can create jobs, including presumably some of those undecided voters. So evidence to the contrary is pretty useful.  There's a reason this story swallowed up the Trump/Machado story so quickly, and that Clinton's campaign seems OK with that even after working so hard to frame the Machado stuff and having it pay off better than they could have imagined.

 
TobiasFunke said:
There's also the question of whether his existing tax proposal is in his self-interest rather than what's best for voters. If he's proposing something that allows people like him to continue to do things like this- or to do it even more profitably- at the expense of middle-class taxpayers, voters have a right to know that he's lying when he says he has their best interests in mind.
Click to expand...
I wanted to address this part separately, because I agree with it 100%.  Since I've been able to vote, I have seen very little proposed under the guise of "tax reform" that wasn't in the interest of the upper echelon of the country.  When politicians speak on this topic I can't help but chuckle.  The things that are actually accomplished might throw a small bone to the middle class from time to time, but there are almost ALWAYS (and I rarely use this term) provisions that benefit the wealthy.  And if we pay close attention, the things that will not benefit big business or the wealthy, somehow, aren't passed as promised.

 
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