By Brendan Kirby By PoliZette

Clinton bashes Trump for legal tax avoidance despite taking advantage of similar loopholes

Hillary Clinton and her surrogates wasted no time amplifying a conjecture-heavy story in The New York Times speculating that Donald Trump paid no taxes for almost two decades, but records show she and her husband used similar schemes.

According to Hillary and Bill Clinton’s joint tax return for 2015, they carried over $699,540 in previous capital gains losses and took a $3,000 deduction on their taxes, the maximum allowed by law. Under the statute, the Clintons can claim the deduction for an unlimited number of years into the future.

“It would seem hard to distinguish between the two … Certainly, there’s inherently no difference between a business loss and a capital gains loss.”

The Times based its story on tax returns it obtained from 1995 showing that Trump claimed a net operating loss of $916 million. Under rules in place at the time, Trump could apply that loss to three previous years and to 15 years going forward. That is how The Times concludes Trump could have eliminated his federal tax liability for 18 years.

But the paper does not actually know if, when, or how much Trump actually deducted, because Trump has not released his tax returns. It would depend on how much money Trump made or lost in subsequent years.

Alan Viard, a tax expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told LifeZette that it is difficult to compare Trump and Clinton without access to the Republican presidential nominee’s tax returns. But other than the fact that Congress has made the write-off more generous for net operating losses than for capital gains losses, he said the two provisions share the same principle.

“It would be a similar thing,” he said. “Once again, Congress has said, ‘We want to give some relief to someone who has genuine losses.’”

He added, “It would seem hard to distinguish between the two … Certainly, there’s inherently no difference between a business loss and a capital gains loss.”

Viard said the public may make a distinction between a candidate who reduces her liability but still pays $3.6 million in federal taxes and one who manages to pay no taxes at all. And he added that Trump may have used other tax provisions — such as the depreciation schedule set up by Congress for physical assets — to inflate his losses. He also said that Trump overstates his case when he argues he had a “fiduciary responsibility” to reduce his personal taxes.

“Clearly, he has the right to do that,” he said. “That is clearly true.”

If people are offended by Trump’s use of the tax code, Congress is free to eliminate that provision. But Viard said there are good reasons for it.

“It’s actually a pretty routine provision, pretty widely used,” he said, adding that not allowing taxpayers to write off operating losses would be unfair “and penalize risk-taking.”

That has not stopped Clinton’s allies from hammering Trump. The Clinton-aligned super PAC Priorities USA turned out an attack ad featuring a woman complaining, “I want a president who’s proud of our country — not a president who’s proud of getting out of paying taxes.”

But the Clintons appear to have worked hard to reduce their taxes as well. In addition to the capital loss carryover, Bloomberg News reported in 2014 that county property records show that the Clintons in 2010 divided ownership of their New York home into separate 50-percent shares and then placed those shares into trusts. The maneuver allows increases in the home’s value to take place outside the couple’s estate, resulting in their ability to claim a discounted value that could save them hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate taxes.

And while Hillary Clinton has railed against wealthy people avoiding federal taxes by stashing money in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens, the couple cavorts regularly with those who do. According to The Daily Caller, Bill Clinton spent years as a partner in an investment fund called Yucaipa Global. Clinton earned at least $10 million in five years working for the fund, based in the Cayman Islands.

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As a senator in 2004, Hillary Clinton vowed to close tax loopholes for “people who create a mailbox, or a drop, or send one person to sit on the beach in some island paradise and claim that it is their offshore headquarters,” but offered no legislation to change it, accord to The Nation magazine. The liberal publication also noted that Clinton as secretary of state supported the U.S.-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement in 2012 that made it easier for money to flow to the Central American country.

And, of course, the Clinton Foundation has accepted massive amounts of money from wealthy donors who have taken advantage of the same loopholes and offshore tax shelters.

Despite attempts to cast Trump as tax cheat, the fact is he — like the Clintons — legally used provisions to reduce taxes. The tax system offers many more tax-savings options to the wealthy — but fundamentally, it is not that much different from a middle-class taxpayer claiming a home mortgage interest deduction or a child tax credit in order pay less in taxes. How many middle-class families fail to claim those deductions so they voluntarily can pay more to the government?

For more on this story go to: http://www.lifezette.com/polizette/hillarys-hypocritical-tax-dance/