New York Times Obtains Trump Tax Returns, Reveals $750 in Federal Taxes Paid

The New York Times obtained and published a comprehensive investigation into President Donald Trump’s tax returns covering more than 20 years, revealing that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in both 2016 (the year he won the presidency) and 2017 (his first year in office). The investigation found Trump paid zero federal income taxes in 10 of the previous 15 years, largely because he reported losing significantly more money than he made. The timing of this revelation, coming just before the first presidential debate, represented one of the most significant exposures of Trump’s actual financial situation versus his cultivated image as a successful businessman.

The investigation uncovered a pattern of aggressive tax avoidance strategies that raised serious questions about the legitimacy of Trump’s business practices. Trump deducted personal expenses as business costs, including $70,000 for hairstyling during “The Apprentice” filming. Most controversially, Trump wrote off $26 million in unexplained “consulting fees” between 2010 and 2018, with approximately $747,622 apparently paid to Ivanka Trump for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver. These payments were particularly problematic because Ivanka was already an executive officer of the Trump companies managing these same projects—meaning she appears to have been paid as both an employee and a “consultant” for identical work, allowing Trump to deduct family payments as business expenses.

Financial Vulnerability and Foreign Interests

The Times investigation revealed Trump was personally responsible for more than $420 million in debt, most coming due within four years. Significantly, Trump paid more in taxes to foreign countries than to the United States: $15,598 in Panama, $145,400 in India, and $156,824 in the Philippines in 2017—the same year he paid just $750 to the U.S. government. This massive debt load and international financial entanglements raised serious national security concerns about a sitting president’s vulnerability to foreign influence and potential conflicts of interest in foreign policy decisions.

The investigation also documented that Trump claimed a $72.9 million tax refund that remained under audit by the IRS, creating potential future tax liability. Trump’s businesses reported $315 million in losses from his golf courses since 2000, yet he continued to pump money into them, raising questions about whether they served business purposes or functioned primarily as vehicles for tax losses and deductions.

Significance

This investigation shattered Trump’s carefully constructed public image as a wildly successful businessman and billionaire, revealing instead a portrait of financial struggles, potential tax fraud through questionable deductions, and systematic use of legal loopholes to avoid paying federal income taxes. The $750 payment stood in stark contrast to the taxes paid by average American workers and undermined Trump’s claims of being a self-made business genius. The revelation that Trump paid his daughter as a “consultant” while she was already an employee raised questions about potential tax fraud that would later become central to New York Attorney General Letitia James’s civil fraud investigation. The investigation provided crucial documentation that Trump’s business empire was built more on debt, licensing deals, and aggressive tax avoidance than on actual profitable business operations, fundamentally contradicting the narrative that propelled him to political power.