The NYT’s was against paying taxes before they were for it. This isn’t an argument against Trump (or the New York Times) as much as is is against the progressive tax code.
To set this story up, we will travel to THE YOUNG CONSERVATIVES regarding the New York Times and Trump’s taxes:
The New York Times ‘illegally obtained’ a copy of Donald Trump’s 1995 tax returns the other day.
The billionaire businessman has said he’d release everything once a routine audit was complete, or he’d do so during the audit against his lawyers wishes if Hillary Clinton released her 30,000 deleted emails.
The ’95 returns show Trump took a $916 million hit that year. Meaning, that loss alone could be why Trump didn’t pay federal income taxes for a number of years.
From New York Times:
Donald J. Trump declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, a tax deduction so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years, records obtained by The New York Times show.
The 1995 tax records, never before disclosed, reveal the extraordinary tax benefits that Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, derived from the financial wreckage he left behind in the early 1990s through mismanagement of three Atlantic City casinos, his ill-fated foray into the airline business and his ill-timed purchase of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.
Tax experts hired by The Times to analyze Mr. Trump’s 1995 records said that tax rules especially advantageous to wealthy filers would have allowed Mr. Trump to use his $916 million loss to cancel out an equivalent amount of taxable income over an 18-year period….
The only problem is, that, the New York Times didn’t pay any taxes as well. Why? Becuase when you are a business/business owner and you have loses… then you can claim those loses. L-E-G-A-L-L-Y! Here is the story from BREITBART:
The New York Times has excited the Clinton campaign and the rest of the media with a revelation that Republican nominee Donald Trump declared a $916 million loss in 1995 that might have resulted in him not paying taxes in some subsequent years.
The implication, reinforced by CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union on Sunday morning, is that Trump “avoided” paying taxes, when in fact his tax liability was zero.
But the Times itself has “avoided” paying taxes — in 2014, for example.
As Forbes noted at the time:
… for tax year 2014, The New York Times paid no taxes and got an income tax refund of $3.5 million even though they had a pre-tax profit of $29.9 million in 2014. In other words, their post-tax profit was higher than their pre-tax profit. The explanation in their 2014 annual report is, “The effective tax rate for 2014 was favorably affected by approximately $21.1 million for the reversal of reserves for uncertain tax positions due to the lapse of applicable statutes of limitations.” If you don’t think it took fancy accountants and tax lawyers to make that happen, read the statement again.