Donald Trump, America's first billionaire president, paid little to nothing in federal taxes over the past decade by employing a variety of creative accounting methods, according to an explosive account of his tax returns by The New York Times.
Trump denied The Times' report in tweets Monday without specifically addressing its claims. He tweeted that he "paid many millions of dollars in taxes but was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation & tax credits." While many such strategies around tax credits and depreciation are technically available to the average American, the ones the president took advantage of to lower his federal income tax bill $750 in two separate years require vast resources.
The president used his multimillion-dollar losses from his businesses to cancel out taxes on his actual income, and used his luxury properties' status as businesses to deduct his everyday luxuries. In other words, if you ran a business that could double as a "winter White House" in southern Florida, you could deduct a lot from your taxes, too.
The president has paid less in taxes than the average ultrawealthy person. At the effective tax rate of the top 1% of Americans, Trump would have paid $100 million, per the Times. Over time, there's been evidence of increasing divergence in tax payments between the ultrawealthy and most Americans — in 2018, billionaires paid a smaller portion of their income in taxes than average Americans for the first time in history.
Keep reading to learn more about the techniques President Trump and his organization used to avoid paying taxes that most average Americans basically can't.