The White House acknowledged late on Tuesday that US President Donald Trump paid US$38 million in taxes in 2005, a rare view into the president’s jealously guarded finances that was leaked to the US media.
Trump reported an income of US$150 million and paid an overall tax rate of about 25 percent, but the leaked summary document does not show the sources of his income, which would confirm or deny allegations of controversial ties with Russian businesses.
The White House confirmed the details of Trump’s 2005 taxes just before David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist, and MSNBC said they would reveal the short filing.
Photo: AFP
Trump has refused to release his full tax returns since he began his quest for the US presidency, shattering decades of tradition among candidates of all political parties.
Trump also wrote off more than US$100 million in business losses to reduce his tax burden, the document showed.
The White House described it as a “large-scale depreciation for construction.”
The two-page snapshot was broadly favorable to the White House, and appeared to back up Trump’s claim that he paid his fair share of taxes and no more.
“The documents show Trump and his wife, Melania, paying [US]$5.3 million in regular federal income tax — a rate of less than 4 percent,” Johnston wrote in a post on the Daily Beast Web site. “However, the Trumps paid an additional [US]$31 million in the so-called ‘alternative minimum tax,’ or AMT.”
The AMT was originally designed to prevent rich taxpayers from using excessive loopholes and Trump had previously called for its elimination.
Appearing on MSNBC with commentator Rachel Maddow, Johnston said that he did not know the source of the leaked return, which had been placed in his mailbox.
“Let me point out it’s entirely possible Donald [Trump] sent this to me,” he said. “Donald has a long history of leaking material about himself when he thinks it’s in his interests.”
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