While I’m not an accountant or tax preparer or anything like that, I can see that there’s not a lot of “there” there.
These figures they’re bantering about? That would be personal income tax. Most of Trump’s wealth is not expressed as a high salary but rather in appreciation of assets which only become “income” when sold and in businesses which taxes are separate from personal income tax. I suspect that he also probably doesn’t personally own most of the stuff he’d use–cars, apartments, what have you–but rather those are assets of businesses he owns.
For what follows, IANALNDIPOOTV:
There are elements of that available even to people of relatively modest means. Have a home business, even a small one, and you can do things like hire your children office cleaning and other such tasks, paying them is then a business expense, and if you have “them” (if under your direction) to buy their food and clothes, you’ve just made feeding and clothing your kids is now a business expense.
Indeed, a news/commentary program many moons ago had a tax adviser on who said that if you have any kind of home business you really, really, need to be doing this.
Oh, you have to make sure that your “home business” _is_ a business so far as the IRS is concerned and not a “hobby” (for which expenses aren’t deductible) but it’s the kind of thing you can do to legitimately reduce your tax bill.
But, sadly, most people don’t understand even this much and so, for a lot of them, “Trump doesn’t pay taxes” will play very well.
The Writer in Black 