The New York Times has obtained tax-return data for President Trump and his companies that covers more than two decades. Mr. Trump has long refused to release this information, making him the first president in decades to hide basic details about his finances. His refusal has made his tax returns among the most sought-after documents in recent memory.
Among the key findings of The Times’s investigation:
* Mr. Trump paid no federal income taxes in 11 of 18 years that The Times examined. In 2017, after he became president, his tax bill was only $750.
* He has reduced his tax bill with questionable measures, including a $72.9 million tax refund that is the subject of an audit by the Internal Revenue Service.
* Many of his signature businesses, including his golf courses, report losing large amounts of money — losses that have helped him to lower his taxes.
* The financial pressure on him is increasing as hundreds of millions of dollars in loans he personally guaranteed are soon coming due.
* Even while declaring losses, he has managed to enjoy a lavish lifestyle by taking tax deductions on what most people would consider personal expenses, including residences, aircraft and $70,000 in hairstyling for television.
* Ivanka Trump, while working as an employee of the Trump Organization, appears to have received “consulting fees” that also helped reduce the family’s tax bill.
* As president, he has received more money from foreign sources and U.S. interest groups than previously known. The records do not reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.
It is important to remember that the returns are not an unvarnished look at Mr. Trump’s business activity. They are instead his own portrayal of his companies, compiled for the I.R.S. But they do offer the most detailed picture yet available.
Below is a deeper look at the takeaways. The main article based on the investigation contains much more information, as does a timeline of the president’s finances. Dean Baquet, the executive editor, has written a note explaining why The Times is publishing these findings.
The president’s tax avoidance Mr. Trump has paid no federal income taxes for much of the past two decades. In addition to the 11 years in which he paid no taxes during the 18 years examined by The Times, he paid only $750 in each of the two most recent years — 2016 and 2017.
[Figures drawn from Mr. Trump’s 2017 tax-return data show the math behind that $750 payment.]
He has managed to avoid taxes while enjoying the lifestyle of a billionaire — which he claims to be — while his companies cover the costs of what many would consider personal expenses.
This tax avoidance sets him apart from most other affluent Americans. Taxes on wealthy Americans have declined sharply over the past few decades, and many use loopholes to reduce their taxes below the statutory rates. But most affluent people still pay a lot of federal income tax.
In 2017, the average federal income rate for the highest-earning .001 percent of tax filers — that is, the most affluent 1/100,000th slice of the population — was 24.1 percent, according to the I.R.S.
Over the past two decades, Mr. Trump has paid about $400 million less in combined federal income taxes than a very wealthy person who paid the average for that group each year.
His tax avoidance also sets him apart from past presidents. Mr. Trump may be the wealthiest U.S. president in history. Yet he has often paid less in taxes than other recent presidents. Barack Obama and George W. Bush each regularly paid more than $100,000 a year — and sometimes much more — in federal income taxes while in office.
Mr. Trump, by contrast, is running a federal government to which he has contributed almost no income tax revenue in many years.
A large refund has been crucial to his tax avoidance. Mr. Trump did face large tax bills after the initial success of “The Apprentice” television show, but he erased most of these tax payments through a refund. Combined, Mr. Trump initially paid almost $95 million in federal income taxes over the 18 years. He later managed to recoup most of that money, with interest, by applying for and receiving a $72.9 million tax refund, starting in 2010.
The refund reduced his total federal income tax bill between 2000 and 2017 to an annual average of $1.4 million. By comparison, the average American in the top .001 percent of earners paid about $25 million in federal income taxes each year over the same span.
The $72.9 million refund has since become the subject of a long-running battle with the I.R.S. When applying for the refund, he cited a giant financial loss that may be related to the failure of his Atlantic City casinos. Publicly, he also claimed that he had fully surrendered his stake in the casinos.
But the real story may be different from the one he told. Federal law holds that investors can claim a total loss on an investment, as Mr. Trump did, only if they receive nothing in return. Mr. Trump did appear to receive something in return: 5 percent of the new casino company that formed when he renounced his stake.
In 2011, the I.R.S. began an audit reviewing the legitimacy of the refund. Almost a decade later, the case remains unresolved, for unknown reasons, and could ultimately end up in federal court, where it could become a matter of public record.
Business expenses and personal benefits Mr. Trump classifies much of the spending on his personal lifestyle as the cost of business. His residences are part of the family business, as are the golf courses where he spends so much time. He has classified the cost of his aircraft, used to shuttle him among his homes, as a business expense as well. Haircuts — including more than $70,000 to style his hair during “The Apprentice” — have fallen into the same category. So did almost $100,000 paid to a favorite hair and makeup artist of Ivanka Trump.
All of this helps to reduce Mr. Trump’s tax bill further, because companies can write off business expenses.
Seven Springs, his estate in Westchester County, N.Y., typifies his aggressive definition of business expenses. Mr. Trump bought the estate, which stretches over more than 200 acres in Bedford, N.Y., in 1996. His sons Eric and Donald Jr. spent summers living there when they were younger. “This is really our compound,” Eric told Forbes in 2014. “Today,” the Trump Organization website continues to report, “Seven Springs is used as a retreat for the Trump family.”
Nonetheless, the elder Mr. Trump has classified the estate as an investment property, distinct from a personal residence. As a result, he has been able to write off $2.2 million in property taxes since 2014 — even as his 2017 tax law has limited individuals to writing off only $10,000 in property taxes a year.
The ‘consulting fees’ Across nearly all of his projects, Mr. Trump’s companies set aside about 20 percent of income for unexplained ‘consulting fees.’ These fees reduce taxes, because companies are able to write them off as a business expense, lowering the amount of final profit subject to tax.
Mr. Trump collected $5 million on a hotel deal in Azerbaijan, for example, and reported $1.1 million in consulting fees. In Dubai, there was a $630,000 fee on $3 million in income. Since 2010, Mr. Trump has written off some $26 million in such fees.
His daughter appears to have received some of these consulting fees, despite having been a top Trump Organization executive.
The Times investigation discovered a striking match: Mr. Trump’s private records show that his company once paid $747,622 in fees to an unnamed consultant for hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, British Columbia. Ivanka Trump’s public disclosure forms — which she filed when joining the White House staff in 2017 — show that she had received an identical amount through a consulting company she co-owned.
Money-losing businesses Many of the highest-profile Trump businesses lose large amounts of money. Since 2000, he has reported losing more than $315 million at the golf courses that he often describes as the heart of his empire. Much of this has been at Trump National Doral, a resort near Miami that he bought in 2012. And his Washington hotel, opened in 2016, has lost more than $55 million.
An exception: Trump Tower in New York, which reliably earns him more than $20 million in profits a year.
The most successful part of the Trump business has been his personal brand. The Times calculates that between 2004 and 2018, Mr. Trump made a combined $427.4 million from selling his image — an image of unapologetic wealth through shrewd business management. The marketing of this image has been a huge success, even if the underlying management of many of the operating Trump companies has not been.
Other firms, especially in real estate, have paid for the right to use the Trump name. The brand made possible “The Apprentice” — and the show then took the image to another level.
Of course, Mr. Trump’s brand also made possible his election as the first United States president with no prior government experience.
But his unprofitable companies still served a financial purpose: reducing his tax bill. The Trump Organization — a collection of more than 500 entities, virtually all of them wholly owned by Mr. Trump — has used the losses to offset the rich profits from the licensing of the Trump brand and other profitable pieces of its business.
The reported losses from the operating businesses were so large that they often fully erased the licensing income, leaving the organization to claim that it earns no money and thus owes no taxes. This pattern is an old one for Mr. Trump. The collapse of major parts of his business in the early 1990s generated huge losses that he used to reduce his taxes for years afterward.
Large bills looming With the cash from ‘The Apprentice,’ Mr. Trump went on his biggest buying spree since the 1980s. “The Apprentice,” which debuted on NBC in 2004, was a huge hit. Mr. Trump received 50 percent of its profits, and he went on to buy more than 10 golf courses and multiple other properties. The losses at these properties reduced his tax bill.
But the strategy ran into trouble as the money from “The Apprentice” began to decline. By 2015, his financial condition was worsening.
His 2016 presidential campaign may have been partly an attempt to resuscitate his brand. The financial records do not answer this question definitively. But the timing is consistent: Mr. Trump announced a campaign that seemed a long shot to win, but was almost certain to bring him newfound attention, at the same time that his businesses were in need of a new approach.
The presidency has helped his business. Since he became a leading presidential candidate, he has received large amounts of money from lobbyists, politicians and foreign officials who pay to stay at his properties or join his clubs. The Times investigation puts precise numbers on this spending for the first time.
A surge of new members at the Mar-a-Lago club in Florida gave him an additional $5 million a year from the business since 2015. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association paid at least $397,602 in 2017 to the Washington hotel, where it held at least one event during its World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians.
In his first two years in the White House, Mr. Trump received millions of dollars from projects in foreign countries, including $3 million from the Philippines, $2.3 million from India and $1 million from Turkey.
But the presidency has not resolved his core financial problem: Many of his businesses continue to lose money. With “The Apprentice” revenue declining, Mr. Trump has absorbed the losses partly through one-time financial moves that may not be available to him again.
In 2012, he took out a $100 million mortgage on the commercial space in Trump Tower. He has also sold hundreds of millions worth of stock and bonds. But his financial records indicate that he may have as little as $873,000 left to sell.
He will soon face several major bills that could put further pressure on his finances. He appears to have paid off none of the principal of the Trump Tower mortgage, and the full $100 million comes due in 2022. And if he loses his dispute with the I.R.S. over the 2010 refund, he could owe the government more than $100 million (including interest on the original amount).
He is personally on the hook for some of these bills. In the 1990s, Mr. Trump nearly ruined himself by personally guaranteeing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, and he has since said that he regretted doing so. But he has taken the same step again, his tax records show. He appears to be responsible for loans totaling $421 million, most of which is coming due within four years.
Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president. Whether he wins or loses, he will probably need to find new ways to use his brand — and his popularity among tens of millions of Americans — to make money.
David Leonhardt writes The Morning, The Times's main daily newsletter. Previously at The Times, he was the Washington bureau chief, the founding editor of The Upshot, an Op-Ed columnist, and the head of The 2020 Project, on the future of the Times newsroom. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. @DLeonhardt • Facebook
The Manhattan district attorney is delving deeply into the personal and financial affairs of the chief financial officer for former president Donald Trump’s company, probing the extent of Allen Weisselberg’s loyalty to Trump and scrutinizing a Trump-owned apartment once occupied by Weisselberg’s son, according to people familiar with the investigation.
This questioning is now led by a former mob prosecutor, and one person familiar with the investigation said it is aimed at “flipping” Weisselberg — attempting to turn one of Trump’s longest-serving and most important aides into a witness against him.
Cyrus R. Vance Jr. (D), Manhattan’s top prosecutor, has not formally accused anyone of wrongdoing, including Trump, Weisselberg or the latter’s family. But the focus on Weisselberg underscores the depth and ambition of Vance’s inquiry, a criminal investigation broader than any Trump’s company is known to have faced before.
Vance’s focus on Weisselberg has included questions related to two of his adult children, a tactic that could be an effort to increase pressure on the elder Weisselberg. One of Weisselberg’s sons also works for the Trump Organization, where he manages the company’s Central Park ice rinks. Another Weisselberg son works for a company that has extended loans to the Trump Organization.
Vance recently obtained millions of pages of Trump’s tax and financial records. Now he appears to be focused on their human equivalent: a man who has paid Trump’s bills and kept his books since the 1980s.
Weisselberg has been CFO since 2000 and has said he handles nearly all the company’s financial transactions. He once described himself in a deposition as Trump’s “eyes and ears .?.?. from an economic standpoint.”
“Allen is in charge of everything,” said one former Trump employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, as did several people familiar with the investigation.
Vance declined to comment for this report. So did the Trump Organization and Mary Mulligan, an attorney for Weisselberg.
Typically, efforts to flip witnesses have two parts: First, prosecutors work to build evidence that a witness may have their own legal liabilities. They then try to convince the witness to save themselves by turning on a higher-up.
The person with knowledge of the case said investigators were trying to “cast a wide net .?.?. looking to shake the tree a little bit.”
In this case, prosecutors have scrutinized Weisselberg’s work in helping to assess the value of Trump buildings as the company sought to obtain loans or property-tax reductions, people familiar with the investigation said. They have also asked about a Trump-owned luxury apartment where Weisselberg’s son Barry lived for several years. The exact nature of Vance’s interest in the apartment is not known, but if Barry Weisselberg, who manages Trump’s ice skating rinks, got the apartment rent-free, that might be considered a fringe benefit of his job and subject to income tax.
Two people with knowledge of the district attorney’s probe said the team has also been analyzing the finances of the cash-only skating rink where Barry Weisselberg works.
How Donald Trump inflated his net worth to lenders and investors
At the same time, investigators have asked detailed questions about Allen Weisselberg’s financial history and his feelings about Trump, according to people familiar with the investigation.
“All the real estate that he’s had. Every house, every car, every perk. The way his lifestyle goes. Is he frugal? Is he generous?” one of the people recounted, listing investigators’ questions about Allen Weisselberg. “What’s his relationship with Donald? .?.?. How loyal is each person to each other?”
A person familiar with thinking at the Trump Organization said company executives are confident their practices for assessing the value of property fall within industry norms for New York City. The person also said there is broad confidence in Weisselberg’s loyalty.
Trump is now facing two wide-ranging probes of his financial practices: Vance’s inquiry and a separate civil investigation by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).
The district attorney’s criminal investigation began in 2018 and focused initially on hush-money payments that Trump attorney Michael Cohen made just before the 2016 election to women who claimed they had affairs with Trump.
Since then, however, his investigation has expanded to cover a wide swath of Trump’s financial activity before the presidency. Vance has subpoenaed records from a variety of sources, according to documents and officials: Trump’s insurance brokers, his lenders, property-tax authorities in New York, even planning and zoning records from a small town that includes a Trump-owned mansion.
Trump has called both inquiries politically motivated. After the Supreme Court last month allowed Vance to obtain his taxes, the former president called the investigation a “fishing expedition.”
People familiar with Vance’s inquiry say it has taken on new urgency since the recent hiring of Mark F. Pomerantz — an attorney who prosecuted Gambino crime family boss John Gotti’s son in the 1990s — on a special assignment.
Vance has sat in on recent interviews, conducted virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic, but let Pomerantz lead the questioning, people familiar with the investigation said.
In those sessions, Pomerantz has focused on Weisselberg, asking wide-ranging questions about the accountant, in an apparent effort to build a broader profile of the longtime Trump employee. The recent focus on Weisselberg was first reported by the New York Times.
“Have you ever met his wife?” one witness was asked recently, according to a person familiar with the investigation. “Have you ever been to his home?”
Investigators have also asked about the apartment in the Trump Parc East building, on Central Park South, where Barry Weisselberg lived for several years. Jennifer Weisselberg, Barry Weisselberg’s ex-wife, told Bloomberg News last year that the couple lived there free. She said she believed at the time the apartment was a wedding gift from Donald and Melania Trump. This week, a spokesperson for Jennifer Weisselberg declined further comment.
City property records show the unit belonged to a Trump-owned entity, Trump CPS LLC. The company later sold the unit in 2014 for $2.8 million.
IRS rules say that if an employer provides an apartment rent-free, it typically should be considered part of the employee’s compensation and subject to income tax. There are exceptions, but they are aimed at people such as live-in maids and building superintendents, who live where they work and are constantly on call. It is not known how Barry Weisselberg or the Trump Organization treated the apartment for tax purposes.
A person familiar with the investigation said prosecutors have been examining portions of Barry Weisselberg’s tax returns.
The Trump Organization did not respond to questions about the apartment. Barry Weisselberg did not respond to a request for comment; his brother, Jack Weisselberg, told The Washington Post he was declining comment for both of them.
Investigators have also asked witnesses about loans made to the Trump Organization by Ladder Capital Finance — Jack Weisselberg’s employer, according to people familiar with the investigation. As part of that process, lenders typically ask about the financial health of the buildings, including the occupancy level and the total rent paid by tenants.
Ladder Capital has loaned the Trump Organization more than $270 million, related to four buildings in Manhattan. The loan documents were signed by other Ladder Capital executives, not Jack Weisselberg.
Neither Ladder Capital nor the Trump Organization has responded to questions asking if Jack Weisselberg played a role in obtaining the loans.
It is unclear what testimony, if any, Allen Weisselberg has provided to Vance’s office.
In the past, however, Weisselberg has provided testimony to government investigations into Trump’s financial dealings.
In 2017, Weisselberg spoke to investigators for a New York attorney general investigation of Trump’s charity, the Donald J. Trump Foundation. He told them that the charity’s board never met, that the charity had “no policy” for determining whether its spending followed nonprofit laws, and that the charity had been co-opted by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, in violation of a ban on mixing charities and politics.
The attorney general later used Weisselberg’s testimony against Trump, in a lawsuit that ended with a New York judge ordering Trump to pay a $2 million penalty.
And Weisselberg also accepted a deal from federal prosecutors focused on Cohen’s hush-money payments, in which Weisselberg testified about others in exchange for immunity for himself. Prosecutors were interested in the Trump Organization’s reimbursement of Cohen for the hush-money payments.
Cohen later pleaded guilty to two felony counts related to those payments. He was sentenced to prison but was released to home confinement last year because of concerns about the coronavirus pandemic.
On Twitter this week, Cohen seemed to relish the idea that Weisselberg was facing new scrutiny, after putting so much scrutiny on him.
“Remember that Allen Weisselberg received (federal) immunity from the SDNY to provide information and testify against me for the @StormyDaniels payment,” he wrote on Tuesday, adding the hashtag “#KarmaBoomerang.”
Alice Crites contributed to this report.
Headshot of David Fahrenthold David Fahrenthold David A. Fahrenthold is a reporter covering the Trump family and its business interests. He has been at The Washington Post since 2000, and previously covered Congress, the federal bureaucracy, the environment and the D.C. police.Follow
Headshot of Jonathan O'Connell Jonathan O'Connell Jonathan O'Connell is a reporter focused on business investigations and corporate accountability. He has covered economic development, commercial real estate and President Donald Trump's business. He joined The Post in 2010.Follow
Headshot of Shayna Jacobs Shayna Jacobs Shayna Jacobs is a federal courts and law enforcement reporter on the national security team at The Washington Post, where she covers the Southern and Eastern districts of New York. Follow
Headshot of Tom Hamburger Tom Hamburger Tom Hamburger is an investigative reporter on the national desk of The Washington Post. He has covered the White House, Congress and regulatory agencies, with a focus on money and politics. Follow
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