re: Trump tax return decisions coming shortly SCOTUS 7-2, 7-2

As a tax accountant, there is nothing in those returns that will show any kind of connection to illegal entities. The only fire power this will provide is that Trump probably has a huge NOL and probably paid very little tax due to passive activity losses and potentially captial losses offsetting capital gains. So while he probably had lucrative deals, he also probably had many real estate losses. But losses aren’t indicative of tax shelters. There are large depreciation deductions in year 1 of deals (legal and within the code) and other things that can offset taxable income in an investment. He probably paid a shite ton of state taxes which would be a large deduction on Sch A because these returns were likely the pre2018 tax law changes that limited state taxes to 10K.

They’ll attack things like that just to show that this filthy millionaire doesn’t pay his fair share of taxes, though he most likely does. You can’t really tell much more than that from a tax return. They are not at all representative of a persons over wealth and don’t tell the whole story on where income comes from. They would have to dig all the way down into his investment entities to get any illegal activity and good luck to them on that.