President Donald Trump earned more than $150 million in 2005 and paid $38 million in income taxes, according to the two pages of his tax returns released by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday night.
Here are the 2005 documents, which were sent to journalist David Cay Johnston of DCReport.org before they were broadcast on Maddow’s show (you can click on the Twitter link below or read the full PDF here):
Trump's 2005 tax return. Note the “CLIENT COPY” stamp. Hmm... https://t.co/Gkh6jTcks5 | https://t.co/6aYZiv8q0i via @msnbc @maddow pic.twitter.com/UWcASa5WcW
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 15, 2017
Vox’s Andrew Prokop pulled out a few highlights from the tax returns:
- Trump and his wife Melania paid about $38 million in federal taxes that year — about a quarter of their $150 million income.
- The Trumps paid relatively little ordinary income tax — $5.3 million — but they did pay $31 million in the alternative minimum tax, which kicks in when people with high incomes use a lot of tax deductions.
- The Trumps also wrote off about $100 million in business losses.
The White House appeared to confirm the authenticity of the documents earlier on Tuesday. As Prokop noted, the White House also accused MSNBC of being “desperate for ratings” and “willing to violate the law.”
Vox’s Ezra Klein countered that Trump himself once vowed to disclose his full returns — and not just two pages from more than a decade ago — to the public. “It’s worth remembering that Trump promised to release his tax returns as soon as his audit was over. This is a promise he has simply dropped,” Klein writes. “Trump can accuse Maddow of breaking the law all he wants, but this is simple journalism she’s doing, and it’s releasing information he has already vowed to make available to the American people.”
