Donald Trump appears to have avoided paying income tax for years. Here are a few things that the US government could have used that money for

Could Donald Trump have gotten a head start making America great with the $916m he appears to have avoided paying income tax on over the last nearly two decades?

According to partial tax returns obtained by the New York Times, after the Republican presidential nominee wrote off the disastrous collapse of his Atlantic City casino properties in New Jersey and other business mishaps on his 1995 personal income taxes, he probably didn’t have to pay any income tax until 2014 – the same year the Trump Taj Mahal casino finally went bankrupt, coincidentally.



So, what could federal and local governments do with $916m in Trump Bucks?

Rebuild the Trump Taj Mahal

The crown jewel in his now defunct casino empire cost about $1bn to build and was described by Trump as “the eighth wonder of the world”. Trump was briefly Atlantic City’s largest employer. The collapse of its casino economy has left the city on the edge of bankruptcy, and the state is suffering too.

Just about close the budget gap for the whole state of New Jersey

In May the budget office of New Jersey’s state legislature announced a $1.1bn shortfall in its budget. The budget – at a final cost of $34.5bn – eventually passed, with aid to poor families, towns in financial trouble, and the state’s “rainy day fund” dramatically reduced. The cause? Lower than expected income tax revenue. The destruction of Atlantic City could not have helped.

Stop the A/C vents in the Northport Veterans Affairs hospital from ‘spewing grit’

Trump has made much of his support for veterans, but his leaked tax returns show he chose to skip donating to a New Jersey tax-funded scheme aimed at helping former military.

That’s a shame. Part of his non-payment could have helped facilities such as Long Island’s Northport 502-bed Veterans Affairs (VA) medical center, where Newsday reported the heating and air conditioning vents began “spewing grit into surgical areas” in February. All five operating rooms at the hospital were closed for months. Phillip Moschitta, the hospital’s director, told Long Island’s News 12 that the vents were 45 years old.

Budget shortfalls for VA construction projects across the entire nation are less than two-thirds of Trump’s tax writeoff: $582m.

Build the Donald J Trump terminal at a ‘third world’ US airport

When he’s not disparaging Rosie O’Donnell or Alicia Machado, one of Trump’s favorite targets is New York City’s much-maligned LaGuardia airport. Renovating the airport would reportedly cost between $4bn and $5.3bn; Trump’s tax avoidance won’t quite cover the entire bill, but it’s probably enough to get his name on the international terminal.

“Our airports are like from a third world country,” Trump has said. “You land at LaGuardia, you land at Kennedy, you land at LAX, you land at Newark, and you come in from Dubai and Qatar and you see these incredible – you come in from China, you see these incredible airports, and you land – we’ve become a third world country.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest New York’s ‘third world’ airport. Photograph: Adrees Latif/Reuters

In New Jersey, another place Trump’s taxes might have gone, there’s another of his favorites: Newark Liberty. In 2012 the Port Authority announced a $350m renovation of that airport’s terminal B – barely one-third of the losses reported on the 1995 form.



Close the New Jersey Transit budget gap 20 times over

The New Jersey Transit public transportation system, which includes the train that smashed into the historic Hoboken station, killing a 34-year-old woman and injuring 100 others, is in crisis during a $45m budget gap. Trump’s tax writeoff, diminished additionally by help from his pal Chris Christie, could have closed the gap 20 times and still left him with enough change to splurge on Steve Miller’s 38-acre estate.

Save the IRS



The money could have triaged the staff cuts and early retirements at the agency that polices the payment of taxes that fund all federal public works in the nation. That’s the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which lost $1.2bn from its budget in 2015 after warnings from the service’s public advocate that underfunding the IRS was certain to hasten financial ruin. “If the IRS lacks adequate funding to do its job effectively, the government will have fewer dollars available to fund all federal programs,” wrote IRS taxpayer advocate Nina Olsen in her 2013 report to Congress, “including national defense, social security, Medicare, veterans’ benefits, medical research, and disaster relief – or simply to reduce the deficit.”

Even without kneecapping the IRS, Trump’s plans are estimated by the politically conservative Tax Foundation to increase the deficit by $10tn. In 2014 liberal policy group the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities called the cuts – deeper every year since Olsen’s warning – “a field day for tax cheats”, with hundreds of millions in cuts resulting in about $30bn less in tax revenue.

Build a wall with Mexico*

*Just kidding. In fact, given the 1,954-mile length of the US-Mexico border and the rough estimate of $25bn provided to the Washington Post by a construction firm economist, the vast sum in taxes Trump probably managed to avoid would be worth about 3.66% of the total bill to American taxpayers, at least if the Mexican president, Enrique Peña Nieto, is to be believed.

Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) Al inicio de la conversación con Donald Trump dejé claro que México no pagará por el muro.



Assuming that cash could go to fund 3.66% of the length of the wall, that leaves a mere 1,882.41 miles to be walled off.