Dan Geltrude
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U.S. Tax Code Discussion on Neil Cavuto, Coast To Coast

Watch Dan Geltrude discuss the U.S. tax code with Neil Cavuto on Fox News Coast To Coast.

Transcription From The Video

Neil: We felt it good to go over this with a tax expert, Dan Geltrude. He says the tax code itself is the issue. And I had the pleasure of chatting with you a little while ago before the show and you said that he’s not breaking any laws, but as you summarized very quickly, it’s getting the attention it does because of who he is, but if you subbed his name for a company, it happens a lot, right?

Dan: Yeah, I think so. Let’s face it, this is really all about Donald Trump. It’s not about anything else. We could talk about how complex the tax code is. Well, the tax code has always been complex. This is specifically about Donald Trump. And if you take a look at what The New York Times is saying specifically, they’re leading into saying Donald Trump hasn’t paid taxes for 18 years. They don’t know if that’s true. They used the term “tax avoidance.” I don’t think this is about tax avoidance. It seems to me that Donald Trump had a tax benefit based upon nearly a billion-dollar loss. Now, if you wanna go out and lose \$1 billion in order to get a benefit, a tax benefit, I don’t think that’s what Trump had in mind.

Neil: Still there are a lot of folks, and we were talking about this as well, who don’t have that opportunity to [inaudible 00:01:19] a bad year and get tax write off. So they say, obviously, you know, it’s a tax code, his friends are saying that’s a sign that he can navigate his way around the tax code and who better to police and change it later on as president? But you pointed out something very interesting. We pick and choose who we have a fight over. Like Warren Buffett. What did you mean by that?

Dan: Well, when we talked about Warren Buffett, what we said is Warren Buffett was famous for making the comment that he is actually in a lower tax bracket than his secretary. Well, there’s a reason for that. It’s because Warren Buffett isn’t paying taxes based upon ordinary income. All of Warren Buffett’s income is being taxed as capital gains. Now, that’s a loophole that he’s taking advantage of. And you can make an argument to say, “Well, listen, that’s a huge tax loophole.” He’s one of the richest men in the country, why aren’t we talking about that as really the problem with the U.S. tax code? But we’re not. We’re talking about Donald Trump. He’s a lightning rod for this stuff, so that’s why we’re doing this.

Neil: But you were expressing that as offensive as some might find this at sort of a gut level, it’s all perfectly legal. Are there any special exemptions or allowances or the more for the real estate or casino industries that others don’t enjoy or what?

Dan: Well, on this specific issue, Neil, we’re talking about net operating losses. And I wanna expand on that for a moment because in our family office practice at my firm, we deal with a lot of wealthy people. But in this specific case, in this specific rule, you could have a situation let’s say, where you have a plumber. He’s got some tough economic times. Construction is slowing down. And let’s say he has a \$90,000 loss. The tax code is set up so that he has the ability to recover. So the next year, and the next year, and the next year when he starts to inch his way back in with having some income, he doesn’t have to pay tax on that. That gives him the ability to get back in business.

Neil: But let me ask you about the 20-year thing. I’m sorry my friend, the 20-year thing that the Times had a big deal about. They’re accurate there in so far as saying if you had a huge loss and there is this \$50 billion in loss that you can take or write off, or whatever you wanna call it every year, then conceivably since that time and maybe just up until now, he hasn’t paid any federal income taxes. That’s a distinct possibility, right?

Dan: That is possible, Neil, but let’s go with this. Donald Trump has billions and billions and billions of dollars, how do we know if he had a \$900 million loss in 1995, and in 1996, he had \$1 billion of income and it was wiped out at that point? We don’t know that. So I believe that people are really making a lot of assumptions where you don’t have the tax returns, so you just don’t know.

Neil: All right. Dan, if you can stick around with us if you don’t mind, I wanna bring you into this…

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