Donald Trump’s campaign manager said the GOP nominee has paid “hundreds of millions” in taxes over the years despite the criticism he’s faced for taking advantage of U.S. tax laws in order to pay as little as possible.
“You look around New York, and other cities, but particularly here, and you see the fruits of Donald Trump’s business acumen,” Kellyanne Conway told “CBS This Morning” on Tuesday.
“But the fact is, this man has paid hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes over decades,” she said. “Excise taxes, federal payroll taxes, city, state and local taxes, real estate taxes, property taxes.”
Democrats, including Hillary Clinton, have pounced on Trump for manipulating tax laws to pay a minimal amount of personal income taxes. Three pages of tax returns published by The New York Times over the weekend revealed that Trump took a loss of nearly $1 billion in 1995, which could have enabled him to avoid paying more than $50 million in federal income taxes for up to 18 years.
Trump spent Monday working to convince voters that while he’s been a “very big beneficiary” of the current tax code, including the benefits afforded to real estate investors, he is “going to straighten it out and make it fair for everybody.”
“I was able to use the tax laws of our country and my skills as a business person to dig out of this real estate depression when few others were able to do it,” he told voters in Colorado. “In those most difficult times, when so many had their backs to the wall, I reached within myself and delivered for my company, my employees, my families and the communities where my properties existed.”
Trump has continued to withhold his personal tax returns, claiming he is under audit by the IRS, making it difficult to verify whether he has paid federal income taxes since 1995.
Nonetheless, the Trump campaign has not denied the Times’ report that he may not have paid income taxes for nearly two decades. Instead, top surrogates such as former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie have lauded the candidate as a “genius” who “brilliantly” used tax laws to pay as little as possible.
