Why Trump didn’t want you to see his tax returns

What’s he been hiding?

We’re finally beginning to find out, now that the House Ways and Means Committee has released six years’ of Donald Trump’s personal and business tax returns. Trump’s returns are complex and it could take weeks for experts to suss out whether Trump cheated, or used overly aggressive techniques to lower his tax bill. The committee didn’t release any tax documents for some of Trump’s business entities, so mysteries could remain.

But a few things are quickly apparent from assessing the top-line figures in Trump’s returns. When Trump declared his candidacy for president in 2015, he characterized himself as a builder and businessman who could go to Washington and fix what politicians had wrecked. Trump’s self-declared status as a political outsider and business titan were crucial elements of his appeal to voters.

But Trump’s tax returns suggest that his businesses are perennial money-losers, while raising questions about how he manages to finance a gilded lifestyle. For each of the six years from 2015 through 2020, one of Trump’s main business entities, DJT Holdings, lost millions of dollars. The smallest loss was $34 million in 2015. The largest was $64 million in 2016. Combined, those losses total $314 million from 2015 through 2020.

This is not an entirely new revelation. Glimpses into Trump’s finances have long revealed that Trump benefits handsomely from losses incurred in one part of his business portfolio, to offset gains elsewhere and dramatically lower his tax bill. Documents leaked to the New York Times in 2016 showed that a $916 million loss Trump declared in 1995 lowered his tax bills for nearly two decades. As Trump began to earn millions from The Apprentice TV show in the 2000s, losses from teetering real-estate ventures, such as his Atlantic City casinos, helped keep his income tax payments low. These practices are generally legal, though some tax experts think Trump could have stretched legal boundaries.