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Trump’s tax returns reveal that he paid $5.3m in federal income tax and an additional $31m in the alternative minimum tax, or AMT.

The alternative minimum tax was created in 1969 (and amended in 1979) to address the fact that some of the uber-wealthy could use so many deductions and loopholes that they ended up paying zero federal income tax. People with high incomes have to calculate their taxes twice – once with all their deductions and once without many of them. The taxpayer must then pay the higher of the two figures.

The gap between those two figures can be enormous – as is made clear by these Trump tax returns, which show Trump would have paid just $5.3m without the AMT.

“If we didn’t have the alternative minimum tax, he would have paid taxes at a lower rate than the poor who make less than $33,000 a year,” David Cay Johnston said on MSNBC about the returns.

Though the AMT was applied to just a few hundred wealthy individuals when it was first imposed, today it hits almost 5m taxpayers.

Trump promised to repeal the AMT in his campaign tax proposal.