Donald Trump’s business and personal income tax filings 2015 through 2020

09/21/2023|John R. Dundon II, EA|Trump Taxes, Uncategorized

After spending the afternoon reviewing Donald Trump et al.’s tax filings for 2015 through 2020, the one thing that resonated repeatedly was that he would never be a client of mine.

Donald Bender of Mazars USA LLP, who signed #TheDonald 2019 personal income tax forms, and Timothy Horam of BKM Sowan Horan LLP, who signed #TheDonald 2020 personal income tax forms, must have gigantic livers.

Highlights

One single auditor from the IRS

The IRS put ONE auditor doing a risk assessment on what could be one of the most complicated returns that the IRS sees any year.
~400 passthrough entities, along with significant expenses, appraisals, and intercompany transactions, which really require a team of auditors.

Questionable conservation easement appraisals

Trump, for example, asserted charitable deductions on a property in West Chester called Seven Springs and made a charitable deduction for the use of the property, which has a $21.1 million value.

Questionable loans to children

In each year of his presidency, Trump claimed he received exactly $18,000 in interest on a loan he gave his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and $8,715 in interest from his son, Donald Trump, Jr.
From 2017 to 2019, Trump said he received exactly $24,000 from his son, Eric Trump, and Eric paid him $19,605 in interest in 2020.
That raises the question of whether the loans were bona fide arm-length transactions, or whether the transfers were disguised gifts that could trigger gift tax and a disallowance of interest deductions by the related borrowers as per the Joint Committee on Taxation
It’s unusual – scarce – to have interest in round numbers.

Questionable net operating losses (NOL) carried forward.

Normally, an IRS auditor would approach NOLs by going back to the originating year of the loss to understand the claims’ efficacy.
If you go back to when he was a bald mouse, Trump’s businesses purportedly lost tens and hundreds of millions of dollars.
We presently have no way of understanding the efficacy of those losses without looking at tax returns that are over ten years old.