Donald Trump has bashed billionaire investors George Soros and Warren Buffett for their business acumen as the Republican presidential nominee’s tax-paying status has come under scrutiny.
“[George] Soros declared $1.5[B] losses, $1.5 billion in just six months, and Warren Buffett declared $873 million. Ask them, did they write off those losses? Oh, I doubt it,” Trump said at a recent rally in Prescott Valley, Arizona.
Trump also alleged that Democratic rival Hillary Clinton didn’t change the tax laws while she was a U.S. senator representing New York state. Fox Business Network reported.
“She could have changed the laws when she was in the United States Senate, but she didn’t,” Trump said. “The reason that she did not do that is her donors and contributors have used those same tax laws as I did.”
Trump ironically took to criticizing others while in the spotlight over his own tax-paying status. And the financial and political pundits have been working overtime, taking the real-estate king and TV-reality show personality to task.
CNBC commentator Ron Insana says, despite Trump’s proclamation to the contrary, it doesn’t take a “genius” to use business losses to cut your tax bill.
“There is no genius involved in using business losses to reduce one's personal tax bill,” Insana wrote for CNBC.com. “However, it does take a special kind of genius to LOSE a billion dollars and claim one is a business success,” Insana wrote.
Trump's decision to take a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax return showed his business acumen and "genius" at figuring out how to minimize his tax bill, two of the Republican presidential candidate's advisers said, Reuters reported.
"This is a perfectly legal application of the tax code. And he would have been fool not to take advantage of it," said Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor who is one of Trump's advisers.
Speaking on the ABC program "This Week," Giuliani said that as a business owner, Trump has a "fiduciary duty" to the investors in his real estate company to maximize profits.
Trump said on Monday he "brilliantly used" U.S. tax rules to his advantage in trying to limit the amount he paid in taxes, arguing it helped him survive a difficult period in the real estate market, Reuters reported.
"I was able to use the tax laws of this country and my business acumen to dig out of the real estate mess ... when few others were able to do what I did," Trump told a crowd in Pueblo, Colorado.
It was Trump's first extended comments since a New York Times report said he had claimed a $916 million loss on his 1995 tax returns, which experts said might have allowed him to avoid paying federal income taxes for 18 years.
Newsmax Finance Insider Megan McArdle explained that one way to look at the situation is that Trump was just following the game rules of the time.
"If Trump managed to pay no taxes for years, the most likely way he did this was by losing sums much vaster than the unpaid taxes. This is fair, it is right, it is good tax policy," she wrote. "There are many valid indictments of Trump as a candidate and as a businessman. But on the charge of unseemly tax avoidance, if this is all the evidence we have, then the grand jury would have to return … no bill."
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
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