The NY Times is hypocritical. They are uber liberal/progressive and for them to not pay taxes is disgusting.
Same with General Electric, whose CEO is a fervent Obama/Democrat supporter and GE pays I think $0 in taxes every year.

And no, I'm not a Trump supporter. But I'm not a Hillary supporter either. Just calling it out as I see it.

I would want the people I work for to use whatever laws are available to cut back on corporate taxes owed.  

Whether the laws should be changed is a different argument. 

the orange guy is a con man and you're being duped just as hard as those people signing up for trump 'university' were.

what's sad is that this ignorance might blast the entire world economy (if he won't just clown his way into WW3) and people who can't even vote will suffer the consequences.

but hey... hopefuly the Turd Sandwich can come up ahead of the Giant Douche just this one time.

just to add a bit to this conversation, here are some tweets Trump made about other people paying little to no taxes: http://time.com/4516001/donald-trump-taxes-twitter/

If I can, I'll try to hunt down some recent hypocritical statements that Chris Christie and Rudy Guiliani said about these tax reports too. But basically, this whole mess is quite glaring for its hypocrisy.

Edit: peeled this off of Reddit: Giuliani in 2012 after Romney's 47% comment said:

>Mr. Giuliani said Mr. Romney should be proud of the remarks.

>**“If I were Governor Romney, I would say that I am glad I had the courage to raise an issue nobody else would raise — that too high a percentage of Americans are not paying taxes and that it’s dangerous when we start to get to half of the country not paying taxes,”** he said “And what I want to do is put those people to work so they can pay taxes and I think Gov. Romney should not be embarrassed about his remark.”

http://www.toledoblade.com/Politics/2012/10/10/Guiliani-uses-Toledo-appearance-to-bash-Obama-plug-Romney-and-Mandel.html

---

Chris Christie, [who also called Trump a genius for not paying taxes](http://pix11.com/2016/10/02/christie-says-trump-a-genius-if-avoiding-taxes/), said about Romney's 47% comment:

>**Mr. Christie said he thinks the GOP nominee simply believes that all Americans “should have skin in the game,”** and that the current administration has allowed government to become too large and expensive.

>**“Everybody should be part of the fair shared sacrifice,”** Mr. Christie said. “And [Mr. Romney] wants everybody to be able to have the opportunity to be able to lift themselves up and their families up.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/sep/19/christie-focus-romney-47-percent-shows-media-bias/

It's unethical to legally not pay taxes and use it for a good purpose instead of donating (it's not tax if it's not mandatory) to a squandering government? Is this truly what Hillary supporters believe?

Remind me again who the shareholders are for Trump's personal income tax returns?  His family?

Also, for the statement about the leak being illegal...

"Borchers alleges that the Times violated a federal statute that forbids the publication of “any [tax] return or return information” in “a manner unauthorized” by law. What Borchers does not understand is that this statute applies only to documents submitted to the federal government. (By its own terms, the statute pertains to “any return or return information (as defined in section 6103(b))”; that section defines “return” as tax information “filed with the Secretary [of the Treasury]”—i.e., federal tax data.)* The Times published portions of tax returns from state filings in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Federal law simply doesn’t punish the disclosure of state tax documents. For that matter, neither does relevant state law: New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut do not have any parallel statutes governing unauthorized publication of tax returns. The Times disclosures, in other words, were perfectly legal.

But just imagine for a moment that these states did criminalize the publication of unlawfully obtained tax returns. There is absolutely no way under the Constitution that the government could punish the Times for breaking these theoretical laws. The First Amendment vigorously protects speech on a matter of public concern; indeed, First Amendment protections are never more robust than when they pertain to speech about a candidate for elective office. Yes, the Times likely printed returns that were illegally obtained. But under the First Amendment, that doesn’t matter: The Constitution also protects the disclosure of illegally intercepted speech on a matter of public concern. If the government attempted to prosecute the Times for its Trump story, any judge with cursory knowledge of the First Amendment would laugh prosecutors out of court."

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/10/02/the_new_york_times_did_not_break_the_law_by_publishing_trump_s_tax_returns.html

This bullshit makes me want to see a flat tax implemented with no loopholes.  Getting rid of all loopholes (yes even child credit) would get rid of almost 3/4 of lobbyist.  Fuck the lobbyist and the tax dodging loopholes they represent.

I wouldn't consider it a separate argument. If the laws should be changed, it means there's something wrong with the current laws, which in turn makes abusing the existing law morally shady. We're pretty much talking about the morality of Trump evading taxes here, and I don't think we can fully dismiss 'should be law be changed' as an argument then. It's not the main point but it's still related.

The only way he could shine this into a positive is if his tax plan was a flat tax (perhaps with a few brackets for how much income earned) with zero loopholes. His tax plan calls for a reduction in rates (mainly for top brackets) with loopholes still in place. He has no leverage here and I don't want to hear carried interest bullshit brought up. There are ways around that thanks in part to loopholes.

There are a few things that the OP is keeping out. First its not that Trump did not pay taxes in the past, its been stated and not disputed by Trump or any of his surrogates that Trump has not paid taxes for like 18 years. Thats a hell of a long time not paying taxes while he claims to be worth 6 billion. Why this is an issue is that Trump campaign started out saying that he is beholden to no rich fat cat because he is a billionaire. If Trump is still eating billion dollar losses where he still does not pay any taxes it comes into question how much debt he has and if he really is this rich guy who cannot be bought.

The second point is that if Trump continues to still not pay taxes who holds his debt. If he is still taken billion dollar losses that mean all the deal he personally put his name to he is borrowing money from somewhere. Is it the Chinese Bank, Germany Deutsche, good old Russia. Its definitely not US banks because they will not lend to him anymore after the bankruptcies.

Next we have a situation where Trump has claimed to have paid millions to charities. Later on we find out that he has used his Foundation money to pay charities in his name or used their funds to settle court cases things like that.

With that all said, Trump is now making statements that he knows how the tax codes and everything works and he is the best person to fix it. The problem I have with this is he has stated no plan. He use to talk about the carried loophole during the primaries but that line of talk has totally disappeared when he won the primary and formed his mostly billionaire fund manager economic team.

To sum this up, this is just another issue concerning Trump character that goes on a huge pile where he has shone that he is dishonest, he will say anything to anyone to make a deal he has no plans of honoring his word whether said, written or in a contract. It goes to show that lying is one of his best business tactics, that he does not give back any of the billions that he has made, that he will exploit any system or people to get what he wants.

You should copy and paste this as an OP to a new thread.  So much truth.  So little space.  It deserves more than to be lost in a sea of replies.