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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTrump boasted about using tax breaks to pay next to nothing. Duckworth used a veterans benefit.
Presented as some kind of scandal. Fox News writer Dom Calicchio wrote, in a Sunday column, that Tammy Duckworth had not paid property tax on her Illinois home since 2015. True, she utilized a tax benefit available to military veterans. She lost both of her legs in combat service to America. Contrast that story to this one
"Donald Trump brags about 'brilliant' use of tax laws, which helped him skirt paying them for years
That's a New York Daily News headline from 2016, but you can find a dozen similar stories about Trump in countless media sources. Here is the story link:
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/trump-brilliantly-tax-laws-paying-article-1.2816127
Here is a snipped:
"I have brilliantly used those laws," Trump continued, to make good on a "fiduciary responsibility to pay no more taxes than is legally required."
"Or to put another way, to pay as little taxes as legally possibly," he said.
The comments were Trump's first public response to a New York Times report published Saturday night that reviewed multiple pages of his 1995 tax returns.
Trump, the returns showed according to the newspaper, declared a loss of almost $1 billion and may have skirted federal income taxes for 18 years.
Then there is this:
"NYT: Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017"
https://www.axios.com/nyt-trump-paid-750-in-federal-income-taxes-in-2016-and-2017-b15150cd-1a05-4e6e-8f0d-7dfd2c2fa1ac.html
Today's Republicans are the standard bearers for "having no shame".
Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)And so is IQ45 himself of course.
Oh, and about that "Fiduciary Responsibility"?
Your companies aren't freaking public dude.
calimary
(81,225 posts)LetMyPeopleVote
(145,168 posts)Link to tweet
The Sun-Times piece opens with the line No one likes to pay property taxes," which is a little cynical. Surely, someone somewhere looks at their tax bill, smiles, and says, Man, I love funding public schools."
It's true that Duckworth doesn't pay property taxes, but it's not because she claims her own home as a business expense. No, she qualifies for this exemption because she's a veteran with a disability rating of 70 percent or higher, as determined by the US Department of Veterans Affairs.
You see, Tammy Duckworth has no legs. She lost them in the Iraq War, where she served as a US Army helicopter pilot. Iraqi insurgents shot down her helicopter in 2004 with a rocket-propelled grenade. She lost both limbs in the attack, as well as some mobility in her right arm. She requested a medical waiver so she could continue to serve in the Illinois National Guard for another decade. Her injuries apparently weren't as severe as bone spurs.
We are trying to figure out, do the Sun-Times and Fox News want us to consider Duckworth a deadbeat or something?