dt lies consistently. Why should we believe

[babylonsister]

he hasn't lied on his tax returns?

[Siwsan]

1. I have no doubt he has - which is one reason why he won't disclose them

I think the other reason is likely that he is not NEARLY as wealthy as he claims, and disclosing would also unmask him for being an even bigger pathological fantasist, than already suspected. If that is possible.

[grantcart]

2. is this a trick question?

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. He has accountants for all that. A wealthy person with complex business interests

would turn all of his records over to the accountants to do the tax returns, and Trump has such a short attention span that he wouldn't take the time to figure out what he ought to lie to his accountants about. Trump's returns are probably hundreds of pages long, and extremely complicated, far too complicated for a dumbass like Trump to understand. The FBI has agents called forensic accountants whose specialty is analyzing convoluted tax and business records to find evidence of dodgy transactions. If most of us ever saw Trump's tax returns we wouldn't have any idea what to look for, and even Trump himself probably wouldn't be able to make sense out of them, but the forensic accountants will. All he would have cared about is that the accountants submitted information to the IRS that would survive an audit, or if not, at least to result in relatively small fines and penalties. And his accountants certainly understood that if they knowingly fiddled the numbers on the returns, they'd be as guilty of a crime as Trump himself.

[babylonsister]

4. Thanks. I do wonder what

class of accountants he has; he does tend to congregate with the bottom feeders. I hope we find out!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. A former accountant of Trump's had this to say:

Perhaps Mitnick sensed that there was a grander role for himself in this story: not just the clerk who verifies the papers but the counsellor as character witness. He told the Times that Donald Trump was brash and undisciplined, so unlike his scrupulous father, Fred. When Trump and his wife Ivana would come into his office to go over the returns, Mitnick said, it was almost always Ivana who asked more questions. On Wednesday, CNN interviewed Mitnick on air via satellite and asked him about the Trump campaign’s argument that avoiding taxes meant Trump had dealt with the tax code “brilliantly.” Mitnick said that Trump had “virtually zero” role in preparing his own taxes. His only contribution was to hire Mitnick. Here, Mitnick gave a grin. He was enjoying himself. “Those returns were entirely created by us,” Mitnick said.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/benjamin-wallace-wells/the-new-york-tale-of-donald-trumps-accountant

His current accountants are this firm:

Trump has said he has a “big accounting firm—one of the most highly respected” to manage his books.

So what’s the name of this mighty accounting firm? The answer: WeiserMazars.

Who?

Though it may be highly respected, Manhattan-based WeiserMazars is by no means big. It is the 24th-largest accounting firm in the nation, according to trade publication Accounting Today, with 109 partners and $158 million in annual revenue. For perspective, KPMG, the smallest of the so-called Big Four accounting firms, has 1,813 partners and $6.9 billion in annual revenue.

http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20160314/BLOGS02/160319975/donald-trumps-unlikely-accountant-is-manhattan-based-weisermazars

[babylonsister]

6. Thanks again; this is somewhat

comforting to me. I'm so used to not believing anything that comes out of or is about this man, maybe the returns will be on the level.