Donald Trump had a tax attorney in the mid-1990’s who is now trying to claim the spotlight saying that the Republican Presidential candidate had little interest in the tax code. These claims differ greatly from Trump’s Tweet saying “I know our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president and am the only one who can fix them.” James Mitnick, the tax attorney in question, claims that as far as he knows, Trump had no knowledge of taxes through late 1996. Mitnick also said in an interview with NBC TODAY that Trump wouldn’t have had the time and the patience to learn all of the tax provisions.
Who is Mitnick and what does he have to do with this? He handled all of Trumps income tax returns in 1995. Parts of these tax returns were published in the New York Times because supposedly people were very interested in how much money he made. Trump had reported a loss of $916 million! It is possible that Trump had been avoiding paying income taxes for around 18 years.
This is around the same time Trump tweeted that he knows everything there is to know about how taxes work. He has brought this up several times whilst on his campaign trail. Apparently Trump was not interested or involved in the 1995 filing. According to Mitnick, Trump was only interested in the bottom line, not the details. Mitnick claims that Ivana Trump, Donald’s wife, was more interested and asked questions about how the taxes were prepared. However, we still cannot prove what Mitnick claims because the Times reports did not expose any tax-avoidance tactics, and they all appeared to be legit. In fact, it is impossible to claim that someone had been avoiding taxes or doing anything sketchy from just one years’ worth of reports published in the Times. Mitnick confirmed this and was not pleased how the Times could come to that conclusion. He also added that himself and his accounting staff stayed well inside the law while also trying to make Trump pay the least possible tax on his income.
The Trump campaign chimed in with a statement late Saturday saying that part of Trump’s responsibilities is paying the least amount of tax possible while staying inside legal boundaries. And they also added that Trump has paid exorbitant amounts of property, real estate, city, state, employee and federal taxes. Supporters of Trump are actually saying that Trump is a genius for paying the least tax possible and would be the right man for tax reform. Of course the Clinton campaign have been trying to use the tax angle as an offensive move in debates and on the TV.