Talk:Tax returns of Donald Trump

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ProPublica item

Never-Before-Seen Trump Tax Documents Show Major Inconsistencies; The president’s businesses made themselves appear more profitable to lenders and less profitable to tax officials. One expert calls the differing numbers “versions of fraud.” by Heather Vogell October 16, 2019 ProPublica: a ref addition? X1\ (talk) 21:14, 18 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Taxes in years paid.

This article mentions Trump not paying taxes in 10 of 15 years. What did he pay in the other 5 years? You would think something as basic as that would be included in an article as long as this one. Agmartin (talk) 14:17, 29 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Some Trump v. Vance sentences mislead or are obsolete

The following Wikipedia text misleads:

"On October 7, 2020, the Court ruled in favor of Vance,[145] but, a week later, Trump requested another stay.[146]"

The Wikipedia misleads because it gives the wrong impression that Trump's request stay was not anticipated by the October 7, 2020 decision. Actually, the October 7, 2020 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit explicitly says at App.148 of a Supreme Court appendix at https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20A63/157461/20201013103007239_Vance%20Appendix.pdf that: INTERIM STAY OF ENFORCEMENT The parties have previously agreed that, should the President seek interim relief from the Supreme Court after our instant affirmance of the district court’s judgment, the District Attorney would “forbear enforcement of the Mazars subpoena until a decision is issued by the Supreme Court denying such a request for interim relief... An interim stay of enforcement of the subpoena under the terms agreed to by the parties is hereby so ordered.

Also, when the Wikipedia text says "Court" it should explicitly say "U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit"

So instead, the Wikipedia text should say something like:

"On October 7, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ordered an interim stay of the subpoena, pending a decision by the Supreme Court."

Also, the following sentence is obsolete and should be deleted:

"It remains unknown when the Manhattan District Attorney's office will obtain the tax records.[147]"

Finally, the original reference from supremecourt.gov declining the stay is at: https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/022221zor_2cp3.pdf

"20A63 TRUMP, DONALD J. V. VANCE, CYRUS R., ET AL. The application for a stay presented to Justice Breyer and referred to the Court is denied." https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/022221zor_2cp3.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by Famspear (talk • contribs) 11:43, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The latter has since been removed, and I have reworded the former. -- Beland (talk) 01:53, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

U.S. Federal income tax law terminology

I cleaned up a few glaring errors in the use of terminology that not only were not supported by the source material, but were also nonsensical.

In U.S. Federal income tax law, the term "exemption" (or "exclusion") relates to a type of income that is not taxable. Exempt (or excluded) income is not included in what the tax law calls "gross income." For example, if a taxpayer receives income in the form of a gift, that income is not included in his/her gross income (i.e., that income is not taxable) (Internal Revenue Code sec. 102).

A "deduction" is generally a loss or expense that is subtracted from gross income in computing something called "taxable income". A tax deduction is NOT A DEDUCTION FROM TAX. Contrary to what you hear people say, if it's a deduction, you don't get to "take it off my tax." You subtract the deduction from GROSS INCOME. The net operating loss (NOL) generated by Trump in a certain year as described in the article is an example of a loss that can be used as a DEDUCTION against gross income in later years. It's not an "exemption" from tax or a dollar for dollar reduction in what would be the tax. The deduction does reduce the tax, but the amount reduced is not equal to the amount of the deduction. Over-simplified example: If the taxpayer is in a 10% tax bracket and the amount of the deduction is $30,000, the deduction effectively reduces the tax by $3,000 (not by $30,000).

A tax "credit", by contrast, is an actual reduction in the what otherwise would be the tax itself. If the amount of the credit is $500, that is a $500 reduction in what would otherwise be the tax.

Sorry to go into such detail, but in an article about U.S. Federal income tax, we really need to stick to the sources -- and we need to use the terms correctly. Famspear (talk) 15:43, 1 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Famspear: Thanks for your attention to detail and work on this article. I'm glad readers are benefitting from your expertise. -- Beland (talk) 01:55, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Are the individual tax return PDFs actually public domain?

For example File:Donald J Trump Individual tax returns Form 1040 2015-1.pdf. A government committee's report is definitely PD, but I'm not sure if a government committee publishing a document that was produced by someone in their private capacity immediately makes it public domain, but since these are IRS forms, I don't think the threshold of originality is met there. I haven't read any of them yet, but assume any supplemental footnotes or "see attached page" might make sections of the file impermissible for Commons. I'm still too unsure of the legal issues here, so I haven't started a deletion request on Commons, but figured this page would have some visibility.-Ich (talk) 20:49, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Public domain or not, do we really need a gallery of the entire tax returns right on this page? Wikipedia is for encyclopedic compilations that refers to other sources and can be used as a starting point for further research on those that are interested. It's not a place where the whole content needs to be posted verbatim just because it's public. People that want to read the returns can go to a website that deals with these topics of relevance (like like here on Politico), and this wiki article can cite it as a source if warranted. The article itself doesn't need to be the destination for those people. 2603:8000:B600:4000:84CD:B8BE:D4F:4551 (talk) 00:36, 31 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I’d say for our purposes the private tax returns are safely in the public domain as there is no one who can claim they have exclusive rights to them. Look at the bigger picture: they have been publicly released by a government entity using the proper legal procedures. Who could claim that they still have exclusive rights to these documents as intellectual property?Given the returns were published and disseminated against Trumps will it is pretty clear he and his his accountants, lawyers etc no longer have the exclusive IP rights to these documents. The US government cannot claim ownership over the returns either - gov works aren’t copyrighted and they had no involvement in creating the originals. I can’t think of anyone else who would have a stake in this so by process of elimination it must be in the public domain. Likewise, tax returns would likely fall under WP:NONCREATIVE. Tax returns aren’t supposed to have any “creative elements” (although I suppose this issue is why they were published in the first place!). Given whoever created them legally swore that they were fact I can’t see how they are in any way a creative work.

This would all be much more problematic if the tax returns weren’t legally obtained, especially since they normally contain sensitive information. Given these went through the proper channels and have been redacted I don’t see this as being an issue. Although originally they were produced by someone in a private capacity, any rights (intellectual property or otherwise) they may have had have clearly been nullified by the decision to release them.

That said, I don’t see the need for a gallery section. The returns are linked at the bottom of the page anyway, anyone who want a to view them can do so very easily. I don’t think we need to worry about legal issues and can safely include select images elsewhere in the article, I just don’t think the gallery adds anything of value. John wiki: If you have a problem, don't mess with my puppy... 09:22, 13 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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