Losing $916M in one year is not smart

[ChrisL]

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.

He doesn't have much of the chance from the start, its a system set up for two parties to dominate. He will be on the ballot in every state though I believe so you should be able to vote for him.

I know, but if he doesn't have a chance in hell of winning, what's the point? I want to prevent that hag from winning. If that means I vote for Trump, then so be it.

 

[ChrisL]

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.

If you look at the Clinton's tax returns -- something you actually can do -- you'll see they don't. Indeed they don't even come close to doing so. For example, in 2015, the Clintons paid federal income tax at 30%.

What about their foundation? How do you explain them being multi millionaires?

 

[ChrisL]

Did those scums work for any of that money?

 

[320 Years of History]

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.

• Brags about being such a great businessman, yet has underperformed his peers by a whopping 48% - 57% by some estimates.

• 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.

Well, I'm on my meal break and I don't have time nor the inclination to read loooooooong posts. I'm sure I've heard it before anyways (the shortened version).

The reason that particular post was so long is that there's so much that Trump's done that is uncalled for, unsubstantiable, unethical, contradictory to his claims and beliefs, etc.

 

[320 Years of History]

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.

He doesn't have much of the chance from the start, its a system set up for two parties to dominate. He will be on the ballot in every state though I believe so you should be able to vote for him.

Mr. Johnson claims to already be on every state's ballot.

 

[ChrisL]

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.

• Brags about being such a great businessman, yet has underperformed his peers by a whopping 48% - 57% by some estimates.

• 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.

Well, I'm on my meal break and I don't have time nor the inclination to read loooooooong posts. I'm sure I've heard it before anyways (the shortened version).

The reason that particular post was so long is that there's so much that Trump's done that is uncalled for, unsubstantiable, unethical, contradictory to his claims and beliefs, etc.

And Hillary is clean? Good Lord. Anyways, I have to go and get back to work now. Why you waste so much of your own time typing out these novels, I don't know. People already have their minds made up for the most part.

 

[320 Years of History]

People already have their minds made up for the most part

Let's hope you are correct.

• RealClearPolitics - 2016 Election 2016 State Polls
  
• RealClearPolitics - 2016 Latest Polls

 

[WheelieAddict]

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.

• Brags about being such a great businessman, yet has underperformed his peers by a whopping 48% - 57% by some estimates.

• 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.

Well, I'm on my meal break and I don't have time nor the inclination to read loooooooong posts. I'm sure I've heard it before anyways (the shortened version).

The reason that particular post was so long is that there's so much that Trump's done that is uncalled for, unsubstantiable, unethical, contradictory to his claims and beliefs, etc.

And Hillary is clean? Good Lord. Anyways, I have to go and get back to work now. Why you waste so much of your own time typing out these novels, I don't know. People already have their minds made up for the most part.

Don't let the election get you down. Crack a joke with a coworker and enjoy your night!

 

[oreo]

The point is in 20 years Trump hasn't used up that 916 million tax loss. So just how wealthy is he?

That's a reasonable question, but there are a lot of perfectly reasonable answers to it, answers that don't go to whether he should or should not be "super" rich today. Trump's businesses are ones that have insanely low (as an industry) average effective tax rates. Given those industry averages, it's quite possible that Trump never finished using the NOL, instead having to just let whatever unused portion of it expire, all the while not ever paying a cent in federal income taxes from 1995 to 2013, or 2015 if he didn't exercise the carryback provision of NOLs.

No you're incorrect we all pay the same tax rates and it all comes back to a 1040 return each and every year. We are talking about what he owed the Federal Government on that 1040 return not his business returns.

He took a 916 million dollar business loss 20 years ago, and he still hasn't offset that loss to where he is now paying Federal income taxes, either earned or investment. ZIPPO in taxes.

This shows that he is either a horrible businessman and works in loss's and other people's money, and that he is not near as wealthy as he claims to be.

Again Mitt Romney is worth 550 million dollars. In one tax year alone he paid 500K in federal taxes. It's because Mitt Romney MAKES money, Donald Trump doesn't.

 

[xband]

Gah! Your posts are too long and boring.

They are rambling but 320 brings a smart opinion and links to back it up.

Well, I'm on my meal break and I don't have time nor the inclination to read loooooooong posts. I'm sure I've heard it before anyways (the shortened version).

The reason that particular post was so long is that there's so much that Trump's done that is uncalled for, unsubstantiable, unethical, contradictory to his claims and beliefs, etc.

And Hillary is clean? Good Lord. Anyways, I have to go and get back to work now. Why you waste so much of your own time typing out these novels, I don't know. People already have their minds made up for the most part.

Don't let the election get you down. Crack a joke with a coworker and enjoy your night!

Old farmer joke: What is the white stuff on top of chicken shit?

 

[WheelieAddict]

They are rambling but 320 brings a smart opinion and links to back it up.

Well, I'm on my meal break and I don't have time nor the inclination to read loooooooong posts. I'm sure I've heard it before anyways (the shortened version).

The reason that particular post was so long is that there's so much that Trump's done that is uncalled for, unsubstantiable, unethical, contradictory to his claims and beliefs, etc.

And Hillary is clean? Good Lord. Anyways, I have to go and get back to work now. Why you waste so much of your own time typing out these novels, I don't know. People already have their minds made up for the most part.

Don't let the election get you down. Crack a joke with a coworker and enjoy your night!

Old farmer joke: What is the white stuff on top of chicken shit?

Dunno what?

 

[Muhammed]

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 husband of the Democrat party's (aka Party Of Slavery) presidential nominee, former Walmart director and Monsanto lawyer Hillary Clinton (aka Crooked Hillary, aka Bride of Frankenfood) is the one who signed the legislation that created the loophole in the first place.

 

[Vigilante]

Flashback: NY Times Crowns Trump The Comeback Kid
nytimes.com ^ | October 25, 1995 | BRETT PULLEY

Though there are still four years to go in the 90's, business and government leaders in New York honored Donald J. Trump yesterday for pulling off what they called "the comeback of the decade."

Mr. Trump, the developer who came to epitomize opulent wealth during the 80's before tumbling into deep financial trouble, has managed to erase much of his debt and is moving ahead with major projects at a time other developers are idling.

Judging from the attention showered on him yesterday at the Union League Club, some of New York's civic and business leaders are quite captivated by Mr. Trump, despite the financial uncertainties that still surround some of his properties.

But the operative word at the luncheon was comeback, though Mr. Trump might dispute that he ever went far away. William D. Fugazy, the limousine magnate and chairman of the Forum Club, the group of business and civic leaders that sponsored the luncheon, presented Mr. Trump with a boomerang encased in glass. "You throw it and it always comes back," he said as he handed it over.

In a flattering speech, Lieut. Gov. Betsy McCaughey called Mr. Trump "the comeback kid." Charles A. Gargano, who as chairman of the Empire State Development Corporation is himself considered one of the new powers of the state, joked about a Perot-Trump presidential ticket. "He would be the most loved Vice President since Spiro T. Agnew," he said. Mr. Gargano, who heads the state's economic development efforts, added, "Thank you for your tax dollars."

 

[xband]

Well, I'm on my meal break and I don't have time nor the inclination to read loooooooong posts. I'm sure I've heard it before anyways (the shortened version).

The reason that particular post was so long is that there's so much that Trump's done that is uncalled for, unsubstantiable, unethical, contradictory to his claims and beliefs, etc.

And Hillary is clean? Good Lord. Anyways, I have to go and get back to work now. Why you waste so much of your own time typing out these novels, I don't know. People already have their minds made up for the most part.

Don't let the election get you down. Crack a joke with a coworker and enjoy your night!

Old farmer joke: What is the white stuff on top of chicken shit?

Dunno what?

I told the old farmer that a chicken can't pee and the white stuff on top of chicken shit is solidified urea. He gave me an amazed look and said that the white stuff on top of chicken shit is chicken shit and we both laughed at my stupidity.

 

[xband]

Why does a sheep farmer wear tall boots?

 

[WheelieAddict]

The reason that particular post was so long is that there's so much that Trump's done that is uncalled for, unsubstantiable, unethical, contradictory to his claims and beliefs, etc.

And Hillary is clean? Good Lord. Anyways, I have to go and get back to work now. Why you waste so much of your own time typing out these novels, I don't know. People already have their minds made up for the most part.

Don't let the election get you down. Crack a joke with a coworker and enjoy your night!

Old farmer joke: What is the white stuff on top of chicken shit?

Dunno what?

I told the old farmer that a chicken can't pee and the white stuff on top of chicken shit is solidified urea. He gave me an amazed look and said that the white stuff on top of chicken shit is chicken shit and we both laughed at my stupidity.

At a campground and met these people who were partying late night, a stupid drama argument broke out so I went back to my site and went to sleep. Next morning I'm talking to a few of the guys about the argument. One says "I don't want to be ostracized because of this". Guy listening to the convo says "what does an ostrich have to do with it?"

 

[TheGreatGatsby]

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.

The OP thinks the money was really "lost". Operating profits may have been negative 916 M on paper. That doesn't mean that was all lost equity at all. And clearly Trump has been an overall success; but you keep pretending he needs to be "fired."

 

[xband]

Well, I'm on my meal break and I don't have time nor the inclination to read loooooooong posts. I'm sure I've heard it before anyways (the shortened version).

The reason that particular post was so long is that there's so much that Trump's done that is uncalled for, unsubstantiable, unethical, contradictory to his claims and beliefs, etc.

And Hillary is clean? Good Lord. Anyways, I have to go and get back to work now. Why you waste so much of your own time typing out these novels, I don't know. People already have their minds made up for the most part.

Don't let the election get you down. Crack a joke with a coworker and enjoy your night!

Old farmer joke: What is the white stuff on top of chicken shit?

Dunno what?

There may be children reading and can't answer.

 

[320 Years of History]

The point is in 20 years Trump hasn't used up that 916 million tax loss. So just how wealthy is he?

That's a reasonable question, but there are a lot of perfectly reasonable answers to it, answers that don't go to whether he should or should not be "super" rich today. Trump's businesses are ones that have insanely low (as an industry) average effective tax rates. Given those industry averages, it's quite possible that Trump never finished using the NOL, instead having to just let whatever unused portion of it expire, all the while not ever paying a cent in federal income taxes from 1995 to 2013, or 2015 if he didn't exercise the carryback provision of NOLs.

No you're incorrect we all pay the same tax rates and it all comes back to a 1040 return each and every year. We are talking about what he owed the Federal Government on that 1040 return not his business returns.

He took a 916 million dollar business loss 20 years ago, and he still hasn't offset that loss to where he is now paying Federal income taxes, either earned or investment. ZIPPO in taxes.

This shows that he is either a horrible businessman and works in loss's and other people's money, and that he is not near as wealthy as he claims to be.

Again Mitt Romney is worth 550 million dollars. In one tax year alone he paid 500K in federal taxes. It's because Mitt Romney MAKES money, Donald Trump doesn't.

Red:
Lord, what have I done to deserve this?

The matter of the $916M NOL has nothing to do with any business tax return. Trump businesses do not pay income taxes. All of his businesses are S-corps, partnerships, sole proprietorships, or LLCs. All of them are what are called "pass through" entities, and of the types of pass through entities, the only type of return (if you can even call it that) any of them submit to the IRS is an information return (for example an 1120S) that the IRS uses to validate the claims made on the personal return(s) and supplementary statements filed by the business owner(s). That means that all the taxes paid are Trump's personal taxes.

What that means for Trump and why his tax returns are so desirable to see is that unlike the returns filed by folks who hold investments in various stocks and other financial instruments, one can tell a whole lot of things about Trump and how he conducts his affairs because all of it is one return, his personal tax returns, assuming he releases the whole kit and kaboodle of it.

To get a rough sense of what kinds of information that entails, take a look at a sample S-corp tax return and supporting documentation which includes state-specific information for every state in which the S-Corp does business. If you look at the sample 1120, pay close attention to the types of information that are in the supporting schedules and statements.

Trump claims there's nothing in his tax return to see, that there's no "news" to be found there. Nothing could be farther from the truth because everything about his businesses will be there too. What an 1120 amounts to is a full on statement of income and a balance sheet along with pretty detailed substantiation (not to the receipt and third-party confirmation level; that's what IRS auditors demand if they choose to audit one's return) for all the amounts shown as a line item on the 1120. To the extent it contains gains/losses carried from prior years, it includes the same types of information from those years too. Trump knows this just as does every CPA and tax specialist in the country.

I know I can't expect that you read all my posts, but I have explained/discussed pass through entities on several occasions.

• http://www.usmessageboard.com/posts/15439678/
  
• Why Trump will never release his tax returns.
  
• CDZ - Should tax reform be revenue neutral?
  
• http://www.usmessageboard.com/posts/15399131/

I share this information and/or bring it up because as a CPA I know that it's not known to "average" individuals. I think that knowing it would be useful in helping folks arrive at more sound conclusions as go the importance of Trump's tax returns, why he won't release them, what stands to be found in them, and how his proposed tax policies will impact various classes of earners. I don't make stuff up because I don't like Trump for President; I know the stuff I write about, and because I know it and what Trump has said is the reason I don't like Trump for President.

More important than whether one reads my posts or doesn't, I do expect folks to at least bother to confirm whether they believe/think to be so is in fact so before sharing their thoughts in public, or at least with me. Alternatively, one could at least indicate, when sharing one's thoughts that one is uncertain of their accuracy and that one has not verified that accuracy. That alone would be enough for me to refraining with the kinds of castigatory remarks in this post.

One thing you may find if you look at past business owning President's tax returns is that they may not show the information returns of privately held companies they own. There could be a number of reasons for that, but the most likely one is that they prepared for their becoming President by transferring their business into a trust. That would obviate them from having to share that information with the American public because the President would then have to only disclose the distributions he received from the trust, but not the details of how the trust generated the income distributed to the President. I don't know what one'll find for I haven't and won't look at every President's returns, but then I've never had concerns about the ethics and legitimacy of what I'd find in those men's business and personal dealings.

 

[320 Years of History]

The OP thinks the money was really "lost". Operating profits may have been negative 916 M on paper.

Operating profits and losses are actual money gained or lost.

• Operating Loss - OL
  
• operating loss definition | Dictionary | AccountingCoach

In tax parlance it's called a "net operating loss," but it's still spending more real money than one has earned in one's business(s). That is why EBIT and EBITDA mean very different things to investors and business owners/managers. It's also why tax savings are so important; they contribute directly to cash flow. When one has an NOL, in the year of the NOL's initial occurrence, you can be sure that nowhere near enough cash flowed in the right direction. In Trump's case, $916M of his actual money flowed in the wrong direction.

"Paper losses" are what one has when a stock's price drops below the price one paid for them. They do not become actual money losses until one sells the stock. That's so for other financial instruments as well.

Trump's businesses are his own. There is no stock transaction that can account for the gains and losses because his companies stock is not traded; it's merely owned by him and his family.