So, trump finally released (well supposedly they were leaked but who leaked them?) some of his tax returns, specifically 2005 and it shows that he did in fact pay some tax, well, quite a lot! BUT, of course there is more to this….

A section of his 2005 tax return shows that roughly 82% of what he paid the IRS was incurred due to ‘alternative minimum tax’, a law that he is aiming hard to abolish!

The returns show that he paid $38m in federal taxes on more than $150m in income in 2005.

The Guardian reported:

The “alternative minimum tax” (AMT), which was introduced to ensure the mega wealthy pay a fairer share of tax, comprised $31m of Trump’s tax bill compared with $5.3m in regular federal income tax. In the run-up to November’s election, Trump pledged to eliminate the AMT altogether, meaning the president campaigned for a change in the tax law that would have benefited him.

The publication of the paperwork prompted immediate condemnation from the White House, which accused MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow of breaking the law and preemptively released figures from the same year.

“You know you are desperate for ratings when you are willing to violate the law to push a story about two pages of tax returns from over a decade ago,” a Trump administration official said in a statement.

Read More here in The Guardian.