Trump never provided his tax returns for scrutiny so unlike Hillary we don't know who exactly he is beholden to. What we know from his son, sources and leaks is that Russian ogligarchs with ties to Putin do hold significant amounts of his company's debt. It is this type of "pay to play" that is far, far beyond anything that has ever been seen before.
He is audited every single year, and there is very deep scrutiny of his personal finances. There are many in the IRS who would love to find something wrong.
It's the political favours and support that mattes.
I will say this: the laws concerning 'conflict of interest' are very weak in the US for the office of the Pres. It's possible that a Malaysian leader could buy favour by offering him a future sweet deal on land for a Casino in Manila type thing. Again - I don't like Trump, and don't think he's evil and probably won't be looking for that kind of deal ... but I also bet he just might not be able to resist!
Anyhow - as of today, he owes almost nothing politically. That's what's weird about it: he's the least civic minded pres in modern history - who also is the most unencumbered! Crazy.
And you keep making these statements about being unencumbered when it is well known that Russian ogligarchs own significant amounts of his company's debt. That is the very definition of being encumbered.
Really? The German bank that has lent Trump millions of dollars has a $14 billion fine to the justice department. https://theintercept.com/2016/11/10/trump-presidency-could-b...
That's not a conflict of interest, it's just regular business.
If you are 'in business' - you 'do business' with banks. There are not that many big ones.
A loan is just a financial product like any other.
For example they describe in detail the tax mix e.g. income versus capital gains, as well as the nature of liquid assets, deduction types etc.
Lol, what does it mean: under control until the guy opens an account under a fake id
But we would probably learn something like:
a) he's not nearly as rich as he claims
b) he's made maybe $50M this year and paid $0 in taxes due to write-offs in earlier years.
That would not go down well publicly.
Romney paid an effective rate of 14% on his $500K income (I think all capital gains) and that was destructive for his campaign. It just looks pretty out of touch - 99% of Americans earn less than $500K and pay far more than 14% in taxes.
So it would have been a publicity disaster, enough to hurt him badly.
Maybe some other skeletons in there.
But I don't think anything illegal.
Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, paid $1.94 million in federal taxes on last year's income of $13.7 million, for an effective tax rate of 14.1 percent, his campaign said Friday.
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2012/sep/21/romneys-paid-194-mi...
He also gave $4 million to charities.
Somehow everybody always forgets this part - when you donate to charity, this is deduced from the taxable income, usually, but is not accounted for in tax rate calculation. Which means, if I earned tons of money and donated it all to charity - I'd pay 0% taxes, so people would say "why this fatcat doesn't pay any taxes even though we are paying a lot, he must be doing some shady things!".
Is it somehow objectively fair that Romney can give an extra ~$1.3 million dollars to some cause other than the US government? Of course not.
(I don't think it is the largest problem with the tax code, but I'm not real certain it is a good thing, the rules for determining whether a charity qualifies to receive deductible contributions effectively add a lot of complexity to the tax code)
I think he'd just come off as an every-day man-of-the-people who understands the economic fears of rural whites but also a savvy businessman who's too smart to pay taxes like a sucker.