We got a rare glimpse into Donald Trump’s tax history Tuesday night, when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow aired a segment on the president’s 2005 federal returns that showed he reported $150 million in income and paid $38 million in federal taxes. What appears to be two pages of Trump’s return was obtained by journalist David Cay Johnston and published on DCReport.org. “The documents show Trump and his wife Melania paying $5.3 million in regular federal income tax—a rate of less than 4%. However, the Trumps paid an additional $31 million in the so-called ‘alternative minimum tax,’ or AMT,” according to the Daily Beast.
“Before being elected President, Mr. Trump was one of the most successful businessmen in the world with a responsibility to his company, his family and his employees to pay no more tax than legally required,” the White House said in a statement. “That being said, Mr. Trump paid $38 million dollars even after taking into account large scale depreciation for construction, on an income of more than $150 million dollars, as well as paying tens of millions of dollars in other taxes such as sales and excise taxes and employment taxes and this illegally published return proves just that.”
It’s unclear who leaked the forms to Johnston, but considering that the 2005 form appears to be your average super-rich-guy level of obnoxiously low taxes paid, which would be a win for Trump, is there a chance it was Trump himself?
