Let’s Talk About Trump’s Tax Liability
This past week has been a crazy one with the first 2020 presidential debate, as well as the discovery of incumbent Donald Trump’s tax returns, which revealed that the President pays less in federal income taxes than the vast majority of US citizens. While this was a shocking headline to many, none of the CPAs that I know (including myself) were surprised by it. Our lack of surprise stems from the knowledge of how entity taxation works in the US compared to personal income taxation, and the many tricks and strategies that can be used to minimize the taxable income derived from entities. Today, we are going to examine two of the key differences between personal and entity taxation and how those differences line up with the current situation surrounding the Trump’s returns.
Businesses Are Taxed on NET Income, and Individuals Are Taxed on Adjusted GROSS Income
When calculating your personal tax liability for the year, you will look at your own form 1040, which includes income from your job, your second job, interest from your bank account, capital gains on stocks and NET business income (as discussed more below). There are a few things that can be done to adjust this income, including contributing to a 401k, taking the standard (or itemizing) deductions, and certain other expenses, but these deductions are very limited compared to what is available to a business.
Businesses are taxed on the income after most expenses. This means that if a company makes $10,000,000 in sales revenue, the IRS considers the $9,500,000 of expenses that are incurred before assessing any taxes (assuming they are all eligible expenses). In this case, the business would report a net income of $500,000. It’s important to note that different legal structures will create a different taxation structure (you may have heard about the differences between a C-Corporation, S-Corporation, Partnership, LLC, etc.), but in most cases, eligible business expenses are deducted against revenue to arrive at the taxable business income.
Knowing this, the goal of any business trying to avoid taxes will be to report the lowest taxable income possible while still maintaining a healthy business. For the President’s returns, this is mainly done legally through depreciation. Depreciation allows a company to take a deduction against income for investments in real estate over a longer period. The theory is that the cost of the property represents a depreciating asset that will need to be fixed up over time, and the proper way to report this decrease in value is through a periodic expense (even if no cash is spent on the property during the period). The issue that many people have with this system is that many real estate investments do not lose value over time, and therefore Companies can report expenses to reduce their tax liability, while simultaneously enjoying the fact that the value of the property went up during the year (not down), mainly due to the appreciation of the location of the property and not the building itself. This reporting is 100% legal and is commonly used by investors to keep more of their income at the end of the year; it is simply one of the benefits of real estate investing. While this difference in the treatment of taxation of companies that invest in real estate can be contentious depending on who you talk to, it is ultimately legal and appropriate within the current US tax code. Ultimately, if the business shows no income at the end of the year because of these expenses, then no income will be assessed at the entity level and therefore no taxes will be owed.
Now where does it fall apart? While depreciation is a large contributor to expenses that are legal, it has been alleged that Trump’s companies reported expenses that were not allowable. These expenses include payments to family members acting as consultants (who were also employees of the reporting entity) and performing services for the entity, costing the entity (and therefore reporting an expense that reduces income) almost $750,000. Given that this particular payment is to one of Trump’s family members, it has been alleged that this payment was fabricated as a business expense to specifically avoid a gift tax, which would cause more of the funds to be lost to taxation. The real legal issue arises when expenses such as these are reported because it is very possible that these are not real expenses to the entity and are really just vehicles to hide the transfer of funds, or being fabricated to intentionally report a lower amount of taxable income. CPAs and regular citizens alike are keeping an eye on the news to see the results of the pending IRS investigation regarding these expenses.
It is also important to remember that businesses that incur net losses during the year will also have no income to report and therefore pay no income tax. So, if these businesses are just losing money, then they are appropriately not being taxed.
Payroll and Other Taxes
Businesses are also responsible for other taxes beyond income taxes. In one way or another, the government will get its fair share of payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare, also known as FICA taxes). When the President makes the claim that his businesses paid many taxes, he technically was not lying (a rare occurrence), but he was not referring to the income taxes of the business. When companies have W-2 employees, there is a payroll tax that is split between the employer and the employee which totals to be 15.3% of compensation paid for all amounts under a limit ($137,700 in 2020). Once this limit is reached, the social security portion of these taxes is no longer required, and the total amount paid jointly by the employer and the employee drops to 2.9% total. For individuals that are self-employed, this takes the form of the self-employment tax on the person’s 1040. While these taxes are deductible against an entity’s income for income tax purposes as noted above, they are still taxes that were paid by the company. Other taxes that are paid by entities can include the property taxes on leased or owned real property, while individuals can pay these as well, it is much easier for a business to deduct these as a regular expense compared to the itemization requirement for individuals.
In the case of Trump, the close to zero personal income tax liability is likely the result of the following:
Most of his wealth is tied up in his ownership of separate legal entities that produce both income and expenses. The net of the income and expenses of these entities flow through to his personal tax return.
Those entities reported enough expenses (including depreciation and the contentious consulting fees) to offset any income, and therefore produced no taxable income to pay taxes on.
However, those entities likely paid all taxes related to employees, including the FICA taxes, and property taxes. So, it is true that Trump “paid taxes,” just not the same ones most Americans do.
Only time will tell how many of the reported expenses are legitimate, but until then, I hope you learned a little more about taxes today and have a better understanding of how the different treatment of entity and personal taxes has impacted Trump’s returns.