How concerned are you that Trump has not disclosed his taxes?

I“m pretty sure he’s not nearly as rich as he’s pretending to be. It won’t matter in the election though. Hillary won’t disclose the transcripts she promised. Nobody voting for Trump will care about his taxes, either they love him no matter what he does/says or they hate Hillary so much that they’ll vote for him no matter what.

I’m sure he’s hiding something regarding his taxes, but it don’t matter a smidge to his supporters anyway. Not sure I’d care if I supported him.

Because he is hiding his tax returns, I have made assumptions about him, which are not good, and can only be changed by their release, if that release shows I am incorrect.
What assumptions? He isn’t as rich as he claims, he doesn’t give money to charity, and he he is abusing tax laws to not pay any taxes.

The candidates are not required by law to disclose their tax returns. It’s just a longstanding tradition. Refusing to go along with that tradition strongly suggests that Trump has something to hide, but we can only guess at what. Obviously, he thinks it’s less damaging to raise that question than to actually release his tax returns. And it looks like he might be right about that. Unlike Romney in 2012, he’s not taking much of a hit for it.

@gorillapaws Hillary promised to disclose the transcripts of her speeches if everyone else did it. Everyone else didn’t do it, so she hasn’t broken any promises.

It doesn’t matter to me; I have never been a supporter, and IMHO it just weakens his already weak credibility.

At this point it is clearly evident that no rational argument is sufficient to dissuade followers of Trump from what the rest of us view as obvious as the sun. The very fact that he refuses to disclose his tax records amounts to a statement of “I don’t pay taxes”. And it makes no difference to the converted.

It’s a tempest in a teapot. If Trump did anything iullegal in his returns, Obama’s IRS would have indicted him. Otherwise the Democrats would scream about any deduction he has taken. Personally I don’t care. Let them just make up stuff like Harry Reid did to Romney. Trump supporters don’t care and Trump haters will continue to scream whether they have the returns or not. Ask yourself, if Trump released his returns and there was absolutely nothing to complain about, would it change your vote?

There’s nothing to be gained by releasing his returns.

Well there certainly are things to be assumed!

@Jaxk Yes, nothing to gain, much to lose.

Trump’s only “strength” is that he is a deal maker business leader supreme who is always winning and worth billions. His tax returns might show that as not quite accurate.

@zenvelo – Tax returns don’t show your net worth. Frankly if he’s only worth $6 billion instead of $9, so what. At least he hasn’t permanently deleted his returns.

Compared to all his other faults, this is microscopic.

I am not voting for him, but regarding concerned, I’m not concerned. Mitt Romney freely admitted he paid a low tax rate and the media and American people jumped all over him. I still don’t understand why. As long as everything he did is legal I can’t see hating the guy for it. Now, I know there was some bustle about him, Romney, hiding money off shore, that would be a big deal if he has money hidden illegally.

As far as Trump, has he stated how much money he earns? Or, just says he has a lot. Amerucans have very different ideas of what is a lot of money depending on their own incomes and wealth. Moreover, most people can make heads or tails of a wealthy persons tax return.

Lastly, the media would get a hold of it and make some talking points, but I don’t think
I have ever seen the media actually bring in a tax accountant to actually explain taxes or tax returns, which is a big gripe of mine I’ve had for a long time.

One thing that really bothers me is Trump said he would show his tax returns, so if he doesn’t, that’s a flat out lie he made that I don’t see how he can twist or turn.

Probably, if he showed his tax return there isn’t much on it that would change my vote if I was planning on voting for him. I’m not going to hate someone for utilizing the tax laws.

His schtick is he knows how people use current law to his advantage, and that’s why he can help fix it. That’s actually a pretty good line in my opinion. I don’t fault anyone for using a law that exists. I would use my minority status, or my husband’s, but I likely would vote to get rid of affirmative action if there was a vote. I would vote to raise capital gains taxes, even though in the past I have utilized that lower tax, and hope to again in the future if I can get my act together.

The government kinda already has his taxes. Seems like there are already 9,000 other reasons not to vote for Trump, and about the same number not to vote for Clinton.

Didn’t ole Mitt Romney do the same thing in the last election?

Mitt finally did release one year of tax returns.

@JeSuisRickSpringfield Which other remaining candidate hasn’t released their wall street transcripts?

@gorillapaws Nice try, but her original statement—which wasn’t even a promise—said nothing about remaining candidates. It was also predicated on other people releasing their transcripts, which makes the entire thing void if the other candidates have no transcripts to release.

@JeSuisRickSpringfield: let me be more clear: who needs to release transcripts? Are you saying that Bernie Sanders, Trump, Jeb Bush, etc. all need to give a speech to Wall Street (if they haven’t done so) and then release the transcripts?

It looks like a promise to me. I don’t see any talk about it being void under certain circumstances…

@gorillapaws It looks like a promise to you because you desperately want it to be a promise. But look at how she prefaces the comment: she mentions the tradition of releasing tax returns and then states that if a new tradition of releasing transcripts of speeches were to be created, she would participate. But here’s the thing: a person with no transcripts to release cannot start a new tradition of releasing transcripts. That can only be done by people who have given speeches. So the behaviors of people with no transcripts to release are irrelevant here.

Furthermore, she doesn’t have to include language voiding it under certain circumstances. She only has to omit language stating that she will release them when there are no more candidates who have not released their own transcripts. Perhaps you don’t understand the difference between “I will release them when others release them” and “I will release them when I am the only one who hasn’t released them,” but they are not logically equivalent statements. I support the same candidate you do. So please stop making us look bad by resorting to bad arguments when good ones exist.

@JeSuisRickSpringfield I would love to hear Hillary explain that in her own words. Reminds me of: “it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is…”

Hillary’s responses to releasing the wall street transcripts, from what I can see, have all just been very polite no’s. “I’ll look into it” is not “I’ll do it,” and “I’ll release them when there’s a precedent to release these sorts of things” is not “I’ll set the precedent.” (I’m paraphrasing—those aren’t exact quotes—but it still stands that she’s never promised to release them. She’s been softly trying to sidestep the issue. Whether or not it’s right for her to sidestep is a separate issue, and I don’t know enough about how the speeches sit in the larger political sphere to have an opinion on that right now.)

Trump isn’t as practiced at this sort of soft evasion—he’s trying to claim an IRS audit is delaying him, even though the IRS has stated that audits do not prevent someone from releasing their tax returns. I think it’s a more transparent and less effective sidestepping, one that is painfully easy to see through. (On the other hand, perhaps Hillary’s are too subtle.) But I don’t think he has outright promised to release anything either.

Of course politicians are reluctant to release anything they don’t have to release—the media jumps all over everything. I think in this case, the difference is what either campaign thinks is “necessary.” Hillary’s campaign, for the most part, follows the political precedents; this is no surprise—she has been a member of the Democratic party for decades. Trump’s campaign, for the most part, tries to find the bare minimum or most ostentatious; this is no surprise—those are the same tactics he employs in his business practices. (Maybe the campaign thinks he’ll gain some more publicity by releasing them later in the year, maybe they just hope the public will have forgotten or exhausted themselves by then.)

I’m very concerned about how many countries Trump will alienate as our president (he lacks diplomacy), I’m leery of his economic and sociopolitical stances (which are still rather vague), and I do not like the idea of another Scalia in the supreme court. (Yes, he was a very intelligent man, but he always had a very rigid and predictable bias. By contrast, Merrick Garland had received bipartisan support as a judge well before the whole supreme-court-appointment-outcry-nonsense. I don’t care that it was legally permissible, it was absurd.)

The tax returns? They’re not the highest on my list of concerns. Still, I doubt the actual documents can be as bad as what I’m imagining, since I know I don’t like Trump for other reasons and am imagining the tax returns based on the underhandedness of a man who files for bankruptcy to avoid paying contractors and/or threatens to tie them up in legal fees for trying to sue for their compensation. Would the returns change my mind if they wind up being somehow spotless? Doubtful, since I’m not deciding a president based solely on their tax returns.

@gorillapaws You’ve already seen her explain it in her own words (e.g., in that interview you linked us to). Like @Soubresaut said, her statements on this have all been polite ways of saying “no.” It’s just more convenient for her opponents to pretend otherwise.