September28: US President Donald Trump did not pay any federal income tax in 10 of the last 15 years, according to a report on Monday.
He only paid $750 federal income tax the year he took office in the White House in 2016, and another $750 the year after in 2017, the New York Times said in its report.
Trump had reported mostly losses greater than earnings in the past decade while he was a businessman, and he also has an ongoing investigation by the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) over a $72.9 million tax refund he received. If he loses, he may owe more than $100 million, according to the report.
Due to the IRS investigation, Trump refuses to share information on his tax returns, despite the looming presidential election on Nov. 3, but he responded to the report as “FAKE NEWS!” on his Twitter account.
In response to a letter summarizing The Newyork Times’s findings, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate” and requested the documents on which they were based. After The Times declined to provide the records, in order to protect its sources, Mr. Garten took direct issue only with the amount of taxes Mr. Trump had paid.
“Over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015,” Mr. Garten said in a statement.
Although US presidents are not required by law to release their tax returns to the public, every American president had done it voluntarily since 1974, except for Gerald Ford who released 10 years of summary.
(Inputs from Anadolu Agency)