The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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Most of us, if we were billionaires (or will be soon), probably wouldn’t mind showing the world just how wealthy we are.  Sure, you could buy that super yacht, a palace or two, maybe an island in the Caribbean, but easier to brag would be just let the folks back home take a gander at the last few years of tax returns.  Okay, maybe it might prove embarrassing that you didn’t pay very much on millions of earnings, but that’s just you, the big boyz don’t apologize for deductions and deferments and carried over losses and all the rest of the loopholes in tax laws.  After all, they didn’t pay all that money for lobbyists to end up paying what you pay.  Wake up!  The rich get richer, ever hear that little jingle?

But my man Trump isn’t like most billionaires.  He actually prefers to brag about his money, not show you his money, and he certainly doesn’t want anyone peeking at his tax returns.  You might think a savvy businessman who’s gone through more than a few bankruptcies and is still a billionaire would be amused if not outright happy to let the gawking losers check out how a winner wins.  Oh sure, the trolls think maybe he isn’t as rich as he says, maybe only a one billion billionaire, not the bragging amount.  Trust me, I could get over any embarrassment over exaggerating a billion or three.  You probably could too.

So what makes the King of the Casinos, the Entrepreneur who can sell his naming rights for millions, what makes him want to hide those tax returns?  Couldn’t be fear of an audit.  After all, he claims he would show them to us soon as the current IRS audit is concluded.  Meaning, if my logic isn’t haywire, he’s already being audited.  Ya think?

If you ever wonder why the GOP fights to defund the IRS, I can’t think of a better example than Donald J. Trump.  Hire a team of lawyers and accountants, play fast and loose with the loopholes, then count on the IRS being a little too undermanned to come checking.  Maybe making these returns public might be Clue 1 that a lot was hidden, a great deal was bogus and the light of day might just be the first step in a real audit. Like the man in the movie said, Show us the Money!

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If you claimed to be worth 10 billion dollars, and you probably don’t, you might expect to pay some serious pesos to the IRS every year. I mean, unless you had a few legitimate deductions. Like bankrupt casinos, say. Or payouts to porn queens to maintain a discreet silence. But would it seem unlikely that in the past 15 years you paid out nothing for 10 of those and 750 bucks two of those years? Mr. T., when asked about this, claimed he had paid very large amounts. We’ll see them as soon as the audits are completed, he told us again. Those audits apparently are very slow.

I suspect that in Mr. T’s mind, 750 bucks is excessive. I would tell you that my own were 10 times that, but … you’ll have to wait until my own audit is complete. What I can say without advice from my fixer — I mean my attorney — is that most of us in this country pay 10 times that. Right off hand, the only folks I know who pay what Donald pays are Amazon and GE and about 50 other corporations on the Fortune 500. This is what is called capitalism and if you’re scared pantless about encroaching socialism, trust me, the vultures have already eaten your BVD’s so quit sweating, you’ve been taken to the cleaners already.

In America the rich write the tax laws. The rich can afford lawyers and tax accountants who can decipher the legalese and navigate the labyrinth. It may be that everything these corporations and Trump Inc. declare as legitimate deductions are on the up and up. 70,000 dollars for his haircuts? Well, the man has to look his best. 100,000 for Ivanka’s stylist? Sure, why not? I spent 15 dollars on my one haircut last year and I forgot to deduct it. Stupid me. I once went to England and my buddy who was an accountant said let’s go to a cathedral, look at the stained glass and you can write off the whole trip. I said I couldn’t do that. He said it’s perfectly legal. I said it might very well be, but it wouldn’t be right. Stupid me.

While giving the wealthy tax breaks, we’re running up trillion dollar deficits. As the pandemic lockdowns drag the poorest of us into crisis mode, we stopped giving unemployment aid to the worst off. If any of you think we’re all in this predicament together, I have a golf course in Florida you might like to buy. Great tax deduction when you add up the losses.

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The ladies at Jolene’s Gift and Boutique were eating their bag lunches in a corner of the back storeroom they’d converted into a break room. Microwave, coffee maker, mini-fridge and a small TV hooked up to a crummy antenna they’d mounted on the back of the building and run a coaxial hookup thru a window. Since their usual soap opera wasn’t on for another 5 minutes they were watching CNN’s coverage of Trump’s tax returns.

“You imagine losing 900 million dollars?” Alice said, munching her cucumber sandwich. “How many lifetimes would it take to make that much?” Shelly laughed, put her iced tea down and pretended to do the math. “Oh, too many if you mean ours? Maybe with plenty of reincarnations.”

From behind her cup of coffee Katie volunteered, “My Jim could lose that much at the casino in a year too if he had it when he walked in. Heck, he may have lost nearly that already. I sure don’t see a paycheck these days. Goes to the tribe.”

“White man’s guilt,” Alice observed with a smirk.

“Maybe he can write it off as a loss,” Shelly suggested. “Isn’t that what Donald did, gamble and lose?”

“Or a charitable donation to the Indians,” Alice tossed in. A commercial for the Washington Lottery came on with improbable timing, its snappy slogan appearing at the end: You cannot win if you do not play. Katie groaned. “Jim should have that tattooed on his fat ass.”

“More like you cannot lose if you do not play,” Shelly suggested, taking one final gulp of her cold coffee and considered pouring a fresh cup, then decided her stomach was already upset.

“You suppose he really is rich?” Katie asked aloud.

“Jim, you mean?” Alice asked and laughed.

“The rich don’t pay taxes,” Katie muttered, “so I guess he must be rich.”

“And the best part?” Shelly moaned, “ it’s all perfectly legal.”

“He claims he’s the only one who can change the laws because he knows how to use them so brilliantly. Brilliantly, he said,” Katie added bitterly, switching the channel to the Young and the Resentful.

“We must be dumb as rocks,” Alice pronounced. Katie got ready to go back to her register. “I might vote for him, though.”

“Dumber than rocks,” Alice reiterated.

“He got rich, didn’t he? And we’re working for minimum wage.”

Shelly got up too. “And we pay taxes.”

Alice turned off the TV. “Dumb as rocks.”

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