President Donald Trump called the New York Times' reporting on his tax figures from 1985-1994 "highly inaccurate." The reporting showed the president recorded nearly $1.2 billion in financial losses during that time. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images White House Trump defends his massive losses on business deals: 'It was sport'

President Donald Trump on Wednesday defended the massive losses he racked up in the 1980s and 1990s, saying the tax write-offs from bad deals were all part of the "sport" of business at the time.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that tax figures it obtained from the years 1985 to 1994 show that even as Trump was loudly touting his wealth and dealmaking prowess, he was bleeding money, some years to the tune of hundreds of millions.


But the president on Wednesday said there was no problem with those numbers, asserting that “almost all real estate developers” did the same thing.

“Real estate developers in the 1980’s & 1990’s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases,” he wrote on Twitter claiming that “much was non monetary.”

“Sometimes considered ‘tax shelter,’ you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes....almost all real estate developers did - and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport,” he continued. “Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!”

Trump’s finances have been at the center of a fierce battle between congressional Democrats and the White House, with the administration repeatedly stonewalling requests for the IRS to release his tax returns — which lawmakers say could reveal foreign conflicts of interest — and his businesses taking banks to court for complying with congressional requests. Though the tax information uncovered by the Times is not the same as what Democrats are seeking, the peek into the future president’s finances paints a damning picture of the self-made billionaire branding that that shot him to fame and eventually to the White House.

According to the Times, Trump's losses, some of which can be attributed to depreciation, grew over time and masked the gains he did make, resulting in Trump not having to pay income taxes for eight years out of the 10-year period the Times examined.

But while Trump has frequently claimed that he was far from the first business owner or real estate developer to use the tax code to pay less in taxes, the Times found that when compared to IRS data for other top earners in the same period, "year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer." In 1990 and 1991 in particular, his losses "were more than double those of the nearest taxpayers in the I.R.S. information for those years," the Times found.

While he dismissed the report Wednesday as "highly inaccurate," he did not dispute any portions of the report specifically.