President Donald Trump's ever-elusive tax returns got slightly demystified Tuesday, as the New York Times released a report detailing one decade of Trump's finances from his days as a real estate tycoon. And, spoiler alert: he's not the “VERY successful businessman” he's claimed to be. According to the Times report, which is based on printouts from Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, rather than the actual tax returns themselves, the now-president lost $1.17 billion from 1985 to 1994—more money than “nearly any other individual American taxpayer.”

Per the Times, Trump's startling losses came from of a rash of unprofitable business purchases, largely in real estate, that included a shuttle operation from Eastern Airlines funded at a rate of $7 million per month and the Trump Taj Mahal Hotel and Casino, which opened with $800 million in debt. The casino never recouped its debts, the Times found, “and sucked revenue from [Trump's] other casinos, Trump’s Castle and Trump Plaza, pulling them deep into the red.” By 1990, Trump's adjusted gross income was negative $400.3 million, which would balloon to negative $915.7 million by 1994. (An earlier Times report found Trump's 1995 adjusted gross income was negative $916 million, an amount then described as “so substantial it could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years.”) As a result of his “overwhelming losses,” the Times found that Trump didn't pay income tax for eight of the ten years reviewed, only paying income tax in 1987 and 1988. Trump was required to pay taxes both years through the alternative minimum tax, which, as the Times described, “was created to make sure wealthy people could not avoid all income tax through loopholes and deductions.”

There were actually some ways that Trump made money in that decade, of course. The Times report details income that “changed year after year,” including $67.1 million in salary in 1988, which largely came from a lucrative deal with former T.V. host Merv Griffin for the Taj Mahal, and a still-unexplained $52.9 million in interest income in 1989. Trump's primary money-making scheme was as a “corporate raider,” in which Trump would buy stock in companies to fuel speculation that he could buy the company—only to drive up the stock price and then cash out. “But always, those gains were overwhelmed by losses on his casinos and other projects,” the Times said, and Trump “ultimately lost the bulk of the gains from his four-year trading spree.” As the Times noted Tuesday, though, the now-president could stand to lose so much money and keep up his gilded lifestyle, largely because the money he lost wasn't actually his. Most of Trump's money “belonged to others,” the Times found, “to the banks and bond investors who had supplied the cash to fuel his acquisitions.” Trump also “secretly leaned on his father’s wealth to continue living like a winner.”

The Trump camp has disputed the findings as “demonstrably false,” though they've yet to point out any specific falsehoods in the Times report. Trump lawyer Charles J. Harder said in a statement to the Times that their statements “about the president’s tax returns and business from 30 years ago are highly inaccurate,” later adding, “I.R.S. transcripts, particularly before the days of electronic filing, are notoriously inaccurate” and “would not be able to provide a reasonable picture of any taxpayer’s return.” The Times has disputed that claim, citing Mark J. Mazur, a former director of research, analysis and statistics at the I.R.S., who said such transcripts are referred to by I.R.S. auditors as “‘handy’ summaries of tax returns,” undergo quality control, and have been used “to analyze economic trends and set national policy.”