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So you're getting some Trump supporters who are saying that this makes Trump smart. But this is false.

The Times story does include some creative tricks to lessen his tax bill. But all of the ones mentioned are at least borderline, if not clearly, illegal.

But the bigger problem is that Trump escaped taxes not primarily through creative accounting. Instead, he escaped them because his businesses lost truly massive amounts of money. The biggest was in the early 1990s when he lost almost $1 billion dollars, more business losses than any other individual in America at the time. This staggering loss was so massive that it allowed Trump to essentially erase his tax liabilities for the rest of the decade, and into the 21st century. Needless to say, it's not a sign of intelligence that your business fails so badly that you don't have to pay taxes for over a decade. When Trump did enjoy success, he usually had large tax bills, as one would expect for a high net worth individual. For example, the times reports that during the later Bush administration, Trump paid over $70 million in taxes, his first significant tax bill in many many years. Why? It was because Trump's financial fortunes had been reinvigorated by the Apprentice and the licensing deals which his new fame made possible. At the same time, the tax advantages of his early 90s failure were running out. Now, if Trump's tax avoision (to quoth Kent Brockman) were the product of an intelligent tax sheltering strategy then you'd expect that he wouldn't pay a lot in taxes. But he did. That's because he was actually successful once again. He didn't have those huge business losses which could offset his tax liability. But as the star power of the Apprentice faded, Trump once again began losing buckets of money. These losses then allowed him, once again, to reduce his tax bill to very low levels. So it's not that he's smart, but that he's very bad at business.

We have other evidence from the report that Trump is bad at business. The Times notes that most of Trump's flagship properties are losing copious amounts of money. His DC hotel lost, I believe, something like $55 million. His golf courses, Mar-a-Lago, and Doral are all losing money. He does have a few money making investments. Trump Tower, where he still owns the commercial space, still makes him money. But other than that his few consistent money makers are all things where he has investments, but which he doesn't manage. Especially important are two office towers which he owns a minority stake in and which are managed by Vornado. This shows his lack of intelligence. The businesses which he actually runs are failing and the few really profitable parts of his portfolio are ones that he plays no role in running.