Trump Taxes

I am madder at Congress than at Donald Trump over the fact that he paid no income tax for eighteen years, as the NYT reports.  Rich people with so much income and so many assets should not be exempt from paying federal income tax.

I support the idea of bankruptcy and business deductions for losses, but they should be reasonable,  One problem with real estate is that property values are often unrealistic.  In general under tax law, depreciation is usually very accelerated, often more so in real estate, where properties often increase in value rather than depreciate.  So, basically depreciation as implemented is welfare for the rich.

Regarding carrying losses backwards and forward for 18 years, I ask how are those losses calculated and whether 18 years i the proper term.  You should be able to deduct losses, but those losses may be inflated by various tricks, by inflated or deflated appraisals, for example.  Eighteen years is arbitrary but reasonable.  Perhaps the time should be related to the time it took to create the asset that led to the loss.  Some tech companies go from boom to bust in fivee years or less; eighteen years seems too long for them.

In general when rich people talk about how much income tax they pay — 15%, 25% or 35% — the question is, “Of what?”  Rich people don’t get a W-2 that says how much they made.  They may take a share of the profits of a company, but there are a lot of judgment calls that go into determining what those profits are.  A company may take big deductions as expenses, making the bottom line profit small, while the actual value of the company increases much more than the bottom line would indicate.  If one invests in stocks. they may double in value in a year, but if you don’t sell them, you don’t pay tax on that profit until you do, maybe years later.  You made $100,000 profit in that year, but you paid no tax on it.  Other investments, like real estate, are treated similarly.  By the time they enter some income figure on their income tax, it has been substantially reduced by various types of welfare for the wealthy tax breaks.

America is an unjust country in which the middle class subsidizes the rich, much like share croppers, tenant farmers, serfs and slaves did in years past.  It’s not as bad, but the rich still oppress the poor, and more and more the rich oppressors tend to be Jews.  The Jews have assumed the “white man’s burden” of oppressing the poor.  The new masters of the plantations live on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley.