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So..how are you going to handle it when Drumpf loses in November?Trump is an old washed up Orange piece of shit, when Clinton kicks his ass in the next 2 debates, his ass is going down the shitter along with his white trash fanboys, nuthuggers, groupies..
Sniff, Sniff, Sniff, go blow more Coke up your nose, you fat bloated, Orange piece of shit..
But losing a billion as a genius businessman is presidential.'Losing' $6 BILLION as Sect of State is rather 'criminal'...
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
Trump has paid more money in taxes than you will ever earn in your lifetime.The so what is, I want to be President, of this great nation, which I refuse to pay a dime for. That dog doesn't hunt.[On Trump and Taxes
Oh my, the breathless NYT reports, after aiding and abetting breaking the law by releasing part of a NY state tax return that was stolen (if it's a true copy) from Trump.
The return showed a roughly $900 million net loss one year.
This, the Times reports, means that Trump may not have paid any federal (or state) taxes for many years.
To which I say: So what?
Let me remind you that the way you generate a net operating loss (NOL) is by losing money. In this case (if the return is factual) Trump lost a lot of money. The tax code allows you to reduce your tax liability when you lose money until your operating income reaches zero (and I remind you, the last 10 to 30 grand of it has already reached a zero payment liability, so you in fact "throw away" that amount worth of tax "benefit" right up front) but you cannot get a refund on previous taxes paid as you accumulated that capital when you take a loss. This is similar but not identical to capital loss treatment.
What happens with a capital loss is that the loss is rolled forward and you may take up to $3,000 a year against future income until it is exhausted, and you may also offset it dollar-for-dollar against future profits (capital gains.) A NOL also can used to "look back" for up to 3 years; which way you wish to go with that will depend on both the tax rates involved and your expected future plans (if the business is shut down then the choice is obvious, but if not it's quite a bit more complex.)
There's nothing wrong with this. You lost actual money to generate the NOL in the first place.
That ability to use it to offset gains isn't "ripping off the government" or "ripping off poor people" since the loss actually happened and in fact you get screwed when you take a NOL and use it to offset future profits because you are forced to consume that loss with inflated dollars in future years, but you cannot adjust the NOL for inflation!
I have personally had both NOL and capital losses in the past and so have millions of others. There's not only nothing wrong with it it is in fact only a partial recapture against a real loss you already suffered.
Let's say that I make a bad investment and lose $500,000. My income that year from investments was $100,000, but I lost half a million in capital. It's gone -- I really lost it -- and the law says that the loss must be crystallized, not on paper, for it to count (in other words I had to have closed the position.)
Ok, so I have a NET -$400,000 from investments this year. I can only take $3,000 of that against my ordinary income; that is, if I had $50,000 worth of W2 income (from a job) the law says I cannot use the $400,000 loss to reduce the $50,000 to zero -- only to $47,000. I can continue to take that $3,000 (yes, it's that tiny!) every year forever until it's consumed, but if I have an investment gain in future years the remainder of the NOL carries forward and is an offset on that gain dollar-for-dollar until it is "used up."
Anyone who invests has, at some time, probably had one of those capital losses. If you have ever run a business and had a losing year you have had NOLs. There is nothing evil, wrong, duplicitous or anything of the sort about taking and using them in future years as they only are usable when you regain, through your hard work, the capital you previously lost and at the time you previously gained it in the first place you already paid taxes on it!
To suggest otherwise or that someone, such as Trump, is evil for having one and thus paying no tax in future years until it was/is consumed is outrageous. Such a suggestion is equivalent to demanding that someone pay taxes on something that has been lost or stolen from them and any politician or media outlet that implies or states same ought to be run out of town on a rail.
Why? Because it is equivalent to demanding "heads I win, tails you lose". To demand that someone pay taxes when they make money but when they lose money they cannot offset that loss against future gains means that you're now obligated to pay when you win and also in effect you are obligated to pay when you lose (irrespective of the reason) as well, because an actual net operating loss destroys part of your capital base!
Trump, if this return is accurate, did what every single company and individual taxpayer with investments does when there is a net loss. There is not only nothing wrong with it the tax code already penalizes you for losses because you cannot offset them dollar-for-dollar against current wage income; you can only take the $3,000/year for capital losses and zero for business net operating losses. Since both losses are in fact destroyed capital (from your point of view) you should be able to deduct them fully against AGI, but that's not how the law works -- you can only deduct them against future business or investment (e.g. net operating) gains.
That is not an abuse of the tax code. What is an abuse of the tax code is to "donate" money to a "charity" (your own family foundation), radically reducing your income (and thus tax liability) that you control and which then turns around and spends nearly none of the donated funds on actual charitable services; rather, nearly all of those funds are used to pay salaries and travel (effectively living expenses and high-on-the-hog living expenses at that!) for your family members and their friends. That is legal but it's slimy as hell and that is what the Clintons have in fact done since leaving the White House.
The NY Times is a hack outfit -- not only did they run a story predicated on a criminal act they are trying to spin something that is not only lawful but every person who either runs a small business or invests does as a matter of course and is perfectly ethical, legal and in fact already occurs under mandated-by-law disadvantage that accrues to someone who has this happen, including Trump, in the tax code!
On Trump and Taxes
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
But losing a billion as a genius businessman is presidential.'Losing' $6 BILLION as Sect of State is rather 'criminal'...
The argument is Trump's lack of admirable qualities. His issues are pure isolationism. Build a wall, shut down trade, exclude immigrants. Hardly a position that guarantees American success.
The argument is Trump's lack of admirable qualities. His issues are pure isolationism. Build a wall, shut down trade, exclude immigrants. Hardly a position that guarantees American success.
Trump's lack of admirable character qualities is just one of the issues with him and his ideas.
- Espouses tariffs which are proven to diminish consumer surplus which has the greatest impact on the people who have the least amounts of disposable income to spend on the goods and services that will cost more as a result of the tariff and its impacts.
The graph above shows the summary of the multiple effects of tariffs. (Click the link above for a discussion of what each of them is and to see how they play into a specific tariff example, but keep in mind those effects exist for all tariffs; it's just their magnitude that changes from tariff to tariff. For a more generalized discussion, click here or here.)
- Price effect
- Revenue effect
- Productivity effect
- Consumption effect
- Redistribution effect
- Terms of trade effect
- Competition effect
- Income and employment effect
- Balance of payment effect.
- Espouses taxation policies that advance the financial aims of wealthy people while advancing those of "average" people almost not at all, but they don't appear that way on a cursory examination of them. (You don't have to believe me. Take my post to your favorite CPA or tax attorney and ask them about what I wrote.)
That "but" has a lot to do with the problem I have with Trump -- he's not at all clear and open about the impact of his tax plan and very few people, proportionately among the U.S. electorate, have the tax knowledge to know or foresee what those impacts are/will be. I mean really. How many folks have formal training on the tax code and how it works? I'd feel differently were he to openly share that information.
Additionally,
- "On a static basis, the plan would lead to at least 0.8% (0.008) higher after-tax income for all taxpayer quintiles. The plan would lead to at least 10.2 percent higher incomes for the top 1 percent of taxpayers or as much as 16.0 percent higher." For a family earning $75K, that's $600 more per year, but for a family earning $400K, that's $3200 (at .08%) but ~$40K at 10.2%. I'll leave it to you to worry about whether someone earning $400K is a one-percenter.
- "The proposal would cut taxes on households at every income level, but much more as a share of income at the top.The fundamental concern the plan poses is that, barring extraordinarily large cuts in government spending or future tax increases, it would yield persistently large, and likely unsustainable, budget deficits."
- Espouses Mexico-specific immigration policies based on the specious notion that Mexicans are taking jobs from citizens, even though it's clear those jobs existed before Mexicans arrived and Americans were unwilling to perform them.
- Is unwilling to share verifiable documentation with the American people that:
- His charitable contributions are what he says they are,
- Show the nature and extent of business associations so that folks can identify what potential conflicts of interest he may have were he to obtain various types of information that can be used to benefit his own businesses and those of his children...and every one of those businesses is privately held, so there's nothing that would make it possible for us to readily determine when/if he's used the "insider" information that comes his way as President.
- Espouses policies overall that independent analysts have asserted will result in enormous GDP and employment contractions.
- The Macroeconomic Consequences of Mr. Trump’s Economic Policies
- He's identified he wants to renegotiate our trade deals, yet he's not identified any of the provisions in the existing deals that he wants to alter and how he wants to alter them. The text of every one of them is available online.
- Espouses ideas and policies that have racist underpinnings and/or racially biased impacts.
- Has stated a preference for at least one provision of Sharia Law. (Or see: Shariah Law praised by Donald Trump for making it easy for men to divorce their wives) The one provision he lilkes is one that is among the many that is unfavorable to women.
- Has "left and right" changed his tune on multiple important issues, sometimes doing so multiple times in one day.
- He promotes conspiracy theory ideas.
- Has threatened to disregard America's existing agreements with foreign nations.
- Thinks Japan and South Korea should arm themselves with nuclear weapons.
- Has used his supposedly charitable foundation to pay his personal debts.
- Blames someone else for everything that goes as he doesn't want it to go.
- Has been shown to have told more untruths and inconsistencies in the space of 1.5 years than any other candidate or sitting President has over the period of a decade.
- Talks about bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., yet his own clothing line isn't made in the U.S., yet the clothing industry is one of the those that has seen the greatest exodus of lowly skilled manufacturing jobs and there are plenty of clothing manufacturers in the U.S. that are capable of producing the clothing he sells.
- His club, Mar-a-Lago employs more guest workers than Americans.
- Claimed he got Obama to release his birth certificate, yet there is clear documentation that Obama did so at least as early as 2011.
- Denies what is patently true regarding his support for Iraq War II before the war began.
- Claimed rights to Trump steaks when the label on the goods was clearly not his.
- He creates needless drama. (Just a few examples because there's not enough space for all of it.)
- In 2006, Trump erected an 80-foot flagpole on the front lawn of Mar-a-Lago without a permit (a height of 42 feet was the limit). It remained controversial as most residents were confident he did it only to invite a lawsuit and make a statement. Once he was fined, Trump publicly said: "The town council of Palm Beach should be ashamed of itself. They're fining me for putting up the American flag. This is probably a first in United States history."
- His contretemps with Megan Kelly.
- His argy-bargy over the Gold Star family.
- His thousands of lawsuits.
- His imbroglio with the chefs who were to open a restaurant in his D.C. hotel.
- His claim that he knows more than all the generals.
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
And the government does nothing to close the loopholes. Of course people are going to take advantage of loopholes. I'll bet Clintons do to.
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
Is losing all those lives in Benghazi , smart?
Is losing several thousand top secret emails , smart?
.
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
And the government does nothing to close the loopholes. Of course people are going to take advantage of loopholes. I'll bet Clintons do to.
The difference is who calls the poor and lower middle class "moochers" for taking advantage of breaks offered to them, while portraying rich like Trump as "smart" "good business" for doing the same thing?
The argument is Trump's lack of admirable qualities. His issues are pure isolationism. Build a wall, shut down trade, exclude immigrants. Hardly a position that guarantees American success.
Trump's lack of admirable character qualities is just one of the issues with him and his ideas.
- Espouses tariffs which are proven to diminish consumer surplus which has the greatest impact on the people who have the least amounts of disposable income to spend on the goods and services that will cost more as a result of the tariff and its impacts.
The graph above shows the summary of the multiple effects of tariffs. (Click the link above for a discussion of what each of them is and to see how they play into a specific tariff example, but keep in mind those effects exist for all tariffs; it's just their magnitude that changes from tariff to tariff. For a more generalized discussion, click here or here.)
- Price effect
- Revenue effect
- Productivity effect
- Consumption effect
- Redistribution effect
- Terms of trade effect
- Competition effect
- Income and employment effect
- Balance of payment effect.
- Espouses taxation policies that advance the financial aims of wealthy people while advancing those of "average" people almost not at all, but they don't appear that way on a cursory examination of them. (You don't have to believe me. Take my post to your favorite CPA or tax attorney and ask them about what I wrote.)
That "but" has a lot to do with the problem I have with Trump -- he's not at all clear and open about the impact of his tax plan and very few people, proportionately among the U.S. electorate, have the tax knowledge to know or foresee what those impacts are/will be. I mean really. How many folks have formal training on the tax code and how it works? I'd feel differently were he to openly share that information.
Additionally,
- "On a static basis, the plan would lead to at least 0.8% (0.008) higher after-tax income for all taxpayer quintiles. The plan would lead to at least 10.2 percent higher incomes for the top 1 percent of taxpayers or as much as 16.0 percent higher." For a family earning $75K, that's $600 more per year, but for a family earning $400K, that's $3200 (at .08%) but ~$40K at 10.2%. I'll leave it to you to worry about whether someone earning $400K is a one-percenter.
- "The proposal would cut taxes on households at every income level, but much more as a share of income at the top.The fundamental concern the plan poses is that, barring extraordinarily large cuts in government spending or future tax increases, it would yield persistently large, and likely unsustainable, budget deficits."
- Espouses Mexico-specific immigration policies based on the specious notion that Mexicans are taking jobs from citizens, even though it's clear those jobs existed before Mexicans arrived and Americans were unwilling to perform them.
- Is unwilling to share verifiable documentation with the American people that:
- His charitable contributions are what he says they are,
- Show the nature and extent of business associations so that folks can identify what potential conflicts of interest he may have were he to obtain various types of information that can be used to benefit his own businesses and those of his children...and every one of those businesses is privately held, so there's nothing that would make it possible for us to readily determine when/if he's used the "insider" information that comes his way as President.
- Espouses policies overall that independent analysts have asserted will result in enormous GDP and employment contractions.
- The Macroeconomic Consequences of Mr. Trump’s Economic Policies
- He's identified he wants to renegotiate our trade deals, yet he's not identified any of the provisions in the existing deals that he wants to alter and how he wants to alter them. The text of every one of them is available online.
- Espouses ideas and policies that have racist underpinnings and/or racially biased impacts.
- Has stated a preference for at least one provision of Sharia Law. (Or see: Shariah Law praised by Donald Trump for making it easy for men to divorce their wives) The one provision he lilkes is one that is among the many that is unfavorable to women.
- Has "left and right" changed his tune on multiple important issues, sometimes doing so multiple times in one day.
- He promotes conspiracy theory ideas.
- Has threatened to disregard America's existing agreements with foreign nations.
- Thinks Japan and South Korea should arm themselves with nuclear weapons.
- Has used his supposedly charitable foundation to pay his personal debts.
- Blames someone else for everything that goes as he doesn't want it to go.
- Has been shown to have told more untruths and inconsistencies in the space of 1.5 years than any other candidate or sitting President has over the period of a decade.
- Talks about bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., yet his own clothing line isn't made in the U.S., yet the clothing industry is one of the those that has seen the greatest exodus of lowly skilled manufacturing jobs and there are plenty of clothing manufacturers in the U.S. that are capable of producing the clothing he sells.
- His club, Mar-a-Lago employs more guest workers than Americans.
- Claimed he got Obama to release his birth certificate, yet there is clear documentation that Obama did so at least as early as 2011.
- Denies what is patently true regarding his support for Iraq War II before the war began.
- Claimed rights to Trump steaks when the label on the goods was clearly not his.
- He creates needless drama. (Just a few examples because there's not enough space for all of it.)
- In 2006, Trump erected an 80-foot flagpole on the front lawn of Mar-a-Lago without a permit (a height of 42 feet was the limit). It remained controversial as most residents were confident he did it only to invite a lawsuit and make a statement. Once he was fined, Trump publicly said: "The town council of Palm Beach should be ashamed of itself. They're fining me for putting up the American flag. This is probably a first in United States history."
- His contretemps with Megan Kelly.
- His argy-bargy over the Gold Star family.
- His thousands of lawsuits.
- His imbroglio with the chefs who were to open a restaurant in his D.C. hotel.
- His claim that he knows more than all the generals.
Gah! Your posts are too long and boring.
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
Oh, so of course Trump must be an idiot and obviously was driven out of business.
/sarc
You are smart enough to know that the losses were stacked for that year for tax write offs, nothing more.
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
And the government does nothing to close the loopholes. Of course people are going to take advantage of loopholes. I'll bet Clintons do to.
The difference is who calls the poor and lower middle class "moochers" for taking advantage of breaks offered to them, while portraying rich like Trump as "smart" "good business" for doing the same thing?
Maybe so, but he certainly isn't worse than old haggy.
The argument is Trump's lack of admirable qualities. His issues are pure isolationism. Build a wall, shut down trade, exclude immigrants. Hardly a position that guarantees American success.
Trump's lack of admirable character qualities is just one of the issues with him and his ideas.
- Espouses tariffs which are proven to diminish consumer surplus which has the greatest impact on the people who have the least amounts of disposable income to spend on the goods and services that will cost more as a result of the tariff and its impacts.
The graph above shows the summary of the multiple effects of tariffs. (Click the link above for a discussion of what each of them is and to see how they play into a specific tariff example, but keep in mind those effects exist for all tariffs; it's just their magnitude that changes from tariff to tariff. For a more generalized discussion, click here or here.)
- Price effect
- Revenue effect
- Productivity effect
- Consumption effect
- Redistribution effect
- Terms of trade effect
- Competition effect
- Income and employment effect
- Balance of payment effect.
- Espouses taxation policies that advance the financial aims of wealthy people while advancing those of "average" people almost not at all, but they don't appear that way on a cursory examination of them. (You don't have to believe me. Take my post to your favorite CPA or tax attorney and ask them about what I wrote.)
That "but" has a lot to do with the problem I have with Trump -- he's not at all clear and open about the impact of his tax plan and very few people, proportionately among the U.S. electorate, have the tax knowledge to know or foresee what those impacts are/will be. I mean really. How many folks have formal training on the tax code and how it works? I'd feel differently were he to openly share that information.
Additionally,
- "On a static basis, the plan would lead to at least 0.8% (0.008) higher after-tax income for all taxpayer quintiles. The plan would lead to at least 10.2 percent higher incomes for the top 1 percent of taxpayers or as much as 16.0 percent higher." For a family earning $75K, that's $600 more per year, but for a family earning $400K, that's $3200 (at .08%) but ~$40K at 10.2%. I'll leave it to you to worry about whether someone earning $400K is a one-percenter.
- "The proposal would cut taxes on households at every income level, but much more as a share of income at the top.The fundamental concern the plan poses is that, barring extraordinarily large cuts in government spending or future tax increases, it would yield persistently large, and likely unsustainable, budget deficits."
- Espouses Mexico-specific immigration policies based on the specious notion that Mexicans are taking jobs from citizens, even though it's clear those jobs existed before Mexicans arrived and Americans were unwilling to perform them.
- Is unwilling to share verifiable documentation with the American people that:
- His charitable contributions are what he says they are,
- Show the nature and extent of business associations so that folks can identify what potential conflicts of interest he may have were he to obtain various types of information that can be used to benefit his own businesses and those of his children...and every one of those businesses is privately held, so there's nothing that would make it possible for us to readily determine when/if he's used the "insider" information that comes his way as President.
- Espouses policies overall that independent analysts have asserted will result in enormous GDP and employment contractions.
- The Macroeconomic Consequences of Mr. Trump’s Economic Policies
- He's identified he wants to renegotiate our trade deals, yet he's not identified any of the provisions in the existing deals that he wants to alter and how he wants to alter them. The text of every one of them is available online.
- Espouses ideas and policies that have racist underpinnings and/or racially biased impacts.
- Has stated a preference for at least one provision of Sharia Law. (Or see: Shariah Law praised by Donald Trump for making it easy for men to divorce their wives) The one provision he lilkes is one that is among the many that is unfavorable to women.
- Has "left and right" changed his tune on multiple important issues, sometimes doing so multiple times in one day.
- He promotes conspiracy theory ideas.
- Has threatened to disregard America's existing agreements with foreign nations.
- Thinks Japan and South Korea should arm themselves with nuclear weapons.
- Has used his supposedly charitable foundation to pay his personal debts.
- Blames someone else for everything that goes as he doesn't want it to go.
- Has been shown to have told more untruths and inconsistencies in the space of 1.5 years than any other candidate or sitting President has over the period of a decade.
- Talks about bringing manufacturing back to the U.S., yet his own clothing line isn't made in the U.S., yet the clothing industry is one of the those that has seen the greatest exodus of lowly skilled manufacturing jobs and there are plenty of clothing manufacturers in the U.S. that are capable of producing the clothing he sells.
- His club, Mar-a-Lago employs more guest workers than Americans.
- Claimed he got Obama to release his birth certificate, yet there is clear documentation that Obama did so at least as early as 2011.
- Denies what is patently true regarding his support for Iraq War II before the war began.
- Claimed rights to Trump steaks when the label on the goods was clearly not his.
- He creates needless drama. (Just a few examples because there's not enough space for all of it.)
- In 2006, Trump erected an 80-foot flagpole on the front lawn of Mar-a-Lago without a permit (a height of 42 feet was the limit). It remained controversial as most residents were confident he did it only to invite a lawsuit and make a statement. Once he was fined, Trump publicly said: "The town council of Palm Beach should be ashamed of itself. They're fining me for putting up the American flag. This is probably a first in United States history."
- His contretemps with Megan Kelly.
- His argy-bargy over the Gold Star family.
- His thousands of lawsuits.
- His imbroglio with the chefs who were to open a restaurant in his D.C. hotel.
- His claim that he knows more than all the generals.
Gah! Your posts are too long and boring.
They are rambling but 320 brings a smart opinion and links to back it up.
I'm sure I've heard it before anyways (the shortened version).
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
And the government does nothing to close the loopholes. Of course people are going to take advantage of loopholes. I'll bet Clintons do to.
The difference is who calls the poor and lower middle class "moochers" for taking advantage of breaks offered to them, while portraying rich like Trump as "smart" "good business" for doing the same thing?
Maybe so, but he certainly isn't worse than old haggy.
Meh, I think he would be far worse as president because he has zero experience in politics. I'm not voting for either of them either though.
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
And the government does nothing to close the loopholes. Of course people are going to take advantage of loopholes. I'll bet Clintons do to.
The difference is who calls the poor and lower middle class "moochers" for taking advantage of breaks offered to them, while portraying rich like Trump as "smart" "good business" for doing the same thing?
Maybe so, but he certainly isn't worse than old haggy.
Meh, I think he would be far worse as president because he has zero experience in politics. I'm not voting for either of them either though.
I want to vote for Gary, but if he doesn't get any kind of national exposure through debates, I don't think he's going to have much of a chance.
The point is in 20 years Trump hasn't used up that 916 million tax loss. So just how wealthy is he?
Money has no utility to me beyond a certain point. Its utility is entirely in building an organization and getting the resources out to the poorest in the world.
-- Bill Gates
Introduction:
Let me be clear from the get go. I do not have a problem with Trump's having availed himself of the tax laws that allow him the likely net operating loss (NOL) carryforward (see also: The Net Operating Loss Carryback and Carryforward - AccountingTools). It was allowed and that's that.
That said, I don't care who one is, single handedly being the person responsible for the business decisions that resulted in a company's (a company the size of Trump's at the time) losing nearly a billion dollars in one year is enough to get pretty much any CEO fired, and most especially a CEO who is as closely involved in his business as Trump is in his. Now it didn't get Trump fired because his businesses are privately held and he's now as then the primary holder of them and the other owners can't sell their shares of ownership in it on the open market.
About the NOL itself:
For whatever tax deductions it gave him, losing $916M dollars in one year is not a smart thing to do. Nobody, nobody starts a business year or plans for the following year by thinking, "Okay. I'm going to lose nearly a billion dollars because it'll give me NOLs that will reduce my income tax liability for years to come." Operating losses are something that happens as a result of bad decision making. Why the decision(s) were bad is beside the point. They were very bad, terrible in fact, business decisions and deducting their cost on one's tax return is nothing more than making the most of a very, very bad business decision.
Now I haven't looked at the full return that's been making the news recently, but I do know that the -$916M figure being cited may not actually be the "starting" sum of the NOL Trump had. That figure could well be the sum carried forward, and then only using part of it to offset his 1995 income tax liability, rather than representing the actual sum of an operating loss he experienced in 1995.
Just to put Trump's NOL into perspective consider this. If you were to earn $100M in 2016 and pay federal income taxes at 30% (meaning you don't do much at all to minimize your tax liability), you'd have a preliminary $30M federal income tax liability. Now if you had a $900M NOL carryforward from 2015, you'd have an actual tax bill of $0. In 2017, unless you have a preliminary federal income tax liability of $870M,. you will also pay zero in federal income taxes.
Let's look at a $900M NOL a slightly different way. Assuming one pays taxes at 15% (that was Mitt Romney's effective tax rate), how much must one earn before all of a $900M NOL is "used up?" $6,000,000,000. One would need to earn $6B over the course of the following 20 years, or 18 years if one exercised the two year carryback election. Bear in mind the preceding figures assume one actually has a preliminary tax bill to begin with.
Frankly, I think 15% as an effective tax rate for Trump's companies is an overestimation of what his rate would be. The reason I think that is what I understand to be the average effective tax rate, according to a NYU Stern School report, in the industries in which he does business:
- Hotels: 11.34%
- REIT: 2.17%
- Real Estate Development: 1.06%
- Real Estate Operations and Services: 11.19%
- Real Estate General/Diversified: 9.4%
- Entertainment: 3.25%
What about Trump's so-called "comeback" after having a $916M NOL?
Well, we all know that Trump thinks his business acumen is "the best thing since sliced bread." Analysts seem to differ. Based on John Griffin's analysis, Trump has underperformed his peers by some 48% to 57%. That says more about just how easy it is to make money in Trump's industry. There aren't many places where one can underperform and still be a billionaire, or as near to being one as makes no difference. That combined with the seriously stupid-sh*t things he's said and done publicly over the past year and a half do not make Trump seem smart at all. What the man is is lucky. Period.
And the government does nothing to close the loopholes. Of course people are going to take advantage of loopholes. I'll bet Clintons do to.
