Decade in the Red: Trump Tax Figures Show Over $1 Billion in Business Losses

Donald J. Trump in 1986, during a tumultuous period of his career marked by acquisition and collapse. [Photo: Ted Thai/The LIFE Picture Collection, via Getty Images]

THE LEDE:

By the time his master-of-the-universe memoir “Trump: The Art of the Deal” hit bookstores in 1987, Donald J. Trump was already in deep financial distress, losing tens of millions of dollars on troubled business deals, according to previously unrevealed figures from his federal income tax returns.

Mr. Trump was propelled to the presidency, in part, by a self-spun narrative of business success and of setbacks triumphantly overcome. He has attributed his first run of reversals and bankruptcies to the recession that took hold in 1990. But 10 years of tax information obtained by The New York Times paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of his deal-making abilities and financial condition.

The data — printouts from Mr. Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, for the years 1985 to 1994 — represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes, information he has kept from public view.

Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig, reporting for The New York Times, have a genuine bombshell tonight, after examining about 10 years of Trump's taxes. It's genuinely astonishing.