Donald Trump offered a new explanation for the $916 million tax write-off he claimed in 1995 in Sunday night’s presidential debate, saying that billionaire Clinton backers Warren Buffett and George Soros have claimed similar losses.
“I pay hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes,” he said.
“Many of her friends took bigger deductions — Warren Buffett, took a massive deduction. Soros, who’s a friend of hers, took a massive deduction,” Trump said. “Many of the people that are giving her all this money that she can do many more commercials on me took massive deductions.”
Buffett is the billionaire head of investment firm Berkshire Hathaway and a Clinton endorsee. Soros, a Hungarian-American hedge fund manager, is one of the biggest contributors to left-leaning organizations and has given $16.5 million to Democratic Party-affiliated groups this cycle, according to the Washington Post.
Earlier this month, the New York Times obtained Trump’s state tax returns from 1995. The documents showed that Trump declared a $916 million loss. Experts speculated that carrying forward those losses may have allowed Trump to avoid paying income taxes for up to 18 years.
Hillary Clinton suggested in the debate that Trump “hasn’t paid federal income taxes in maybe 20 years.”
Multiple times, Trump asserted that he pays hundreds of millions of dollars of taxes, including federal taxes, over an unspecified period of time. He did not specifically say, however, that he paid federal income taxes.
