Daily US Times: President Donald Trump’s federal income taxes just revealed by the New York Times as the newspaper says Mr Trump paid just $750 (£587) in federal income tax both in 2016, the year he ran for the US presidency, and 2017 in his first year in the White House.
The newspaper says it obtained tax records for President Trump and his companies over two decades and also alleges that he paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the last 15 years.
The Times says the records reveal “chronic losses and years of tax avoidance”.
Mr Trump called the report “fake news”.
After the story was published on Sunday, he told reporters: “Actually I paid tax. And you’ll see that as soon as my tax returns – it’s under audit, they’ve been under audit for a long time.”
The US President added: “The [Internal Revenue Service] does not treat me well… they treat me very badly. You have people in the IRS – they treat me very badly.”
Mr Trump has faced legal challenges for refusing to share documents concerning his business and fortune and is the first president since the 1970s not to make his tax returns public, though this is not required by law.
The New York Times said information in its report was “provided by sources with legal access to it”.
The report came just weeks before the 3 November election and days before Mr Trump’s first presidential debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden.
What are the key claims?
The newspaper said it reviewed tax returns relating to President Trump and the companies owned by the Trump Organization going back to the 1990s, as well as his personal returns for 2016 and 2017.
It said the Mr Trump paid just $750 in income taxes in both 2016 and 2017, while the president paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years, “largely because he reported losing much more money than he made”.
Before becoming president, he was known as a celebrity businessman and property mogul.
But the Times says his reports to the IRS “portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes”.
President Trump indicated in a public filing that he earned at least $434.9m in 2018. The newspaper disputes this, alleging that his tax returns show the president had instead gone into the red, with $47.4m in losses.
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