US President Donald Trump paid just $750 in US income taxes in both 2016 and 2017, reported losing millions of dollars from his golf courses and has hundreds of millions in debt that will come due in the next few years, according to a report in the New York Times.
Trump paid no income taxes in 10 of the past 15 years because he generated large losses that offset any money that he made, according to the Times analysis of at least two decades worth of Trump’s personal and business tax returns.
But the American president denied the report and repeated his stance to only share his tax returns after an audit is finished.
“First of all, I’ve paid a lot and I’ve paid a lot of state income taxes too,” Trump said during a news conference on Sunday after the detailed report.
“The story is a total fake,” he said. “They’re under audit and when they’re not, I would be proud to show you.”
The documents show that many of Trump’s businesses are struggling, with him putting more money into the firms than he’s taking out. It also said he earned $73 million abroad in his first two years in the White House, including from authoritarian-leaning countries such as the Philippines and Turkey, despite a pledge that he would pursue no new foreign deals while president.
Trump bucked tradition in refusing to release his personal tax records, which had become standard among candidates for office in recent decades. House Democrats have issued subpoenas for the documents, which have been mired in legal battles for more than a year. The Supreme Court in July said lower courts need to do more to scrutinize the tax return requests.
The Times didn’t disclose how it got the documents, but said the documents came from sources with legal access to the information. A lawyer for Trump Organization told the Times that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate.”
The revelations into Trump’s financial life are likely to be a key point of contention heading into the final month of the presidential campaign. Trump, who has built his public image as a successful businessman and as a billionaire, faces a series of financial challenges, according to the Times reporting.