In the U.S., there’s an old saying that there are only two things that are certain in life: death and taxes.

But as it turns out, death is way more certain than taxes in the United States.

Corporations and some wealthy individuals, including President Donald Trump, are able to legally avoid any federal taxation in some years by deducting business expenses such as capital investments, charitable donations, interest on their home loans, health care costs and numerous other write-offs from their corporate or personal income.

In a report late Tuesday, The New York Times said from 1985 to 1994, Trump lost more than $1 billion in his real estate business operations and paid no federal income taxes in eight of those 10 years.

Trump called the report inaccurate but did not dispute any specific facts. He said it was “sport” for developers to game the U.S. tax code so they did not have to pay taxes.

Unlike U.S. presidents for the past four decades, Trump has balked at releasing his tax returns, although opposition Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives are seeking, so far unsuccessfully, to get him to divulge his returns for the last six years. A court fight over the dispute is possible.

The independent Tax Policy Center estimates that in 2018, 44% of Americans paid no federal income tax under the country’s progressive sliding scale of taxation, where those making the most money, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, pay a higher percentage tax than those with way less annual income.

Various provisions of the U.S. tax code, such as the standard deduction to reduce taxable income or such allowable itemized deductions as for making donations to charities or for expenses to operate a business from home, can sharply reduce income subject to federal taxation.

But even those individuals not subject to any federal taxation, however, likely have paid payroll taxes, payments to cover mandatory withholding from their paychecks to fund the government’s pension plan for older and retired workers, and health insurance for Americans over 65. About three-quarters of American households pay federal income taxes, the payroll taxes or both.

The median annual U.S. household income is $56,516, meaning half earn more, half less.

According to one recent survey of nearly 130,000 American consumers, the average American spends $10,489 each year in federal, state, and local income taxes, about 14% of the average survey respondent’s gross income.

In the corporate world, however, with the tax overhaul pushed to passage by Trump and Republican lawmakers in 2017 that cut the basic federal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, 60 of the biggest U.S. corporations avoided paying any taxes last year, according to the Washington-based Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The research group said these companies should have paid a collective $16.4 billion in federal income taxes, but instead, with various legal deductions from their income, received a net tax rebate of $4.3 billion.

It reported that among the 60 profitable U.S. corporations paying no federal income taxes last year were some of the country’s best known businesses, including General Motors, Amazon, Chevron, Netflix, Delta Air Lines, IBM, Goodyear Tire & Rubber, and Eli Lilly.

 
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U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday belittled a report that he lost more than $1 billion as a New York real estate mogul between 1985 and 1994, claiming it was “sport” for developers to write off such losses to legally avoid paying federal taxes.

In a pair of tweets, the president called the report in The New York Times “very old information … a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!” but did not dispute that he avoided paying federal income taxes in eight of the 10 years in question.

“Real estate developers in the 1980’s & 1990’s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases,” Trump said. “Much was non monetary. Sometimes considered “tax shelter,…” you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes….almost all real estate developers did – and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport.”

As he ran for the presidency in 2016 and since assuming power, Trump has often portrayed himself as a successful entrepreneur worth billions of dollars. But unlike U.S. presidents for the last four decades, he has balked at voluntarily disclosing his personal federal income tax returns.

He wrote a best-selling book, “Trump: The Art of the Deal,” but the newspaper called his financial dealings three decades ago a “Decade in the Red,” and “The Art of Losing Money.”

The Times said that in the 10-year period in question Trump lost more money year after year than any other U.S. taxpayer. The newspaper did not use the actual returns for its report but instead used information provided by someone who had access to the documents.

The bulk of Trump’s losses during that period came from his core businesses, including hotels, casinos and retail space inside apartment buildings.

They also include failed investments in an airline, a professional football team and unfinished plans for real estate developments.

According to the Times, Trump was able to maintain a life of luxury all those years because most of his money came from banks and bond holders who invested in the Trump empire. Trump also relied on his father’s wealth, according to the report.

But it appears Trump did not break any federal laws because the U.S. tax code allows people to deduct substantial business losses from their income, cutting their tax bills to little or nothing.

One of the president’s lawyers, Charles Harder, told the newspaper that the tax information it used was “demonstrably false.”

“IRS (Internal Revenue Service) transcripts, particularly before the days of electronic filing, are notoriously inaccurate … would not be able to provide a reasonable picture of any taxpayer’s return,” he told the Times.

Opposition Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives are trying to get their hands on Trump’s tax returns from 2013 to 2018 as part of their investigation into the president’s foreign business deals.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has so far declined, saying the request has no “legitimate legislative purpose.”

Disclosure of Trump’s tax returns is one of several current legislative oversight disputes the majority bloc of House Democrats is waging with Trump and his administration. Several panels are seeking background information uncovered by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump campaign links to Russia in 2016 and whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice by trying to thwart Mueller’s probe.

House Democrats are threatening to hold key Trump administration officials in contempt of Congress for failing to turn over information or to testify about their actions.

 
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VOA’s White House correspondent Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.

The U.S. House Judiciary Committee was due to vote Wednesday on holding hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress over the Justice Department’s refusal to provide an unredacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on his investigation of Russian election interference.

Before the vote was held, the White House said President Donald Trump has “no other option than to make a protective assertion of executive privilege” over the materials the committee asked for in its subpoena, due to what Press Secretary Sarah Sanders called a “blatant abuse of power” by committee chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler.

“The American people see through Chairman Nadler’s desperate ploy to distract from the President’s historically successful agenda and our booming economy. Neither the White House nor Attorney General Barr will comply with Chairman Nadler’s unlawful and reckless demands,” Sanders said in a statement.

Committee leaders and Justice Department officials had met Tuesday to try to resolve their dispute, but the two sides each issued statements late in the day indicating they remained far apart.

The Justice Department’s positions came in the form of a letter to Nadler from Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd who accused Nadler’s committee of making “unreasonable demands” and provoking “an unnecessary conflict between our respective branches of government.”

Boyd said the Justice Department had acted within the law and regulations by offering a copy of the Mueller report “with as few redactions as possible,” but said committee leaders escalated the dispute by demanding all committee members be allowed to review that version, something he said would “risk violating court orders” in some ongoing cases.

Nadler in his statement said the White House had long ago waived its executive privilege over the materials requested in the subpoena, which include not only the full Mueller report but also the underlying documents from the investigation of Russia’s interference with the 2016 election, whether members of Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia, and whether the president obstructed justice.

If the Democrat-controlled Judiciary Committee approves the contempt citation for the attorney general, it would be taken up by the full House of Representatives. In theory, someone held in contempt could eventually be tried and, if convicted, face up to a year in prison. The Justice Department rarely pursues such referrals from Congress.

Nadler’s committee is also considering whether to hold Donald McGahn, the former White House counsel, in contempt of Congress if he refuses to testify before the committee later this month about the Mueller probe.

McGahn on Tuesday refused to comply with a subpoena for documents related to the investigation.  The White House had demanded he ignore the subpoena, and his lawyer said the documents were property of the White House and as such McGahn had no right to them.

Barr last month released a redacted copy of the Mueller report, with the prosecutor concluding neither Trump nor his campaign colluded with Russia, but reached no conclusion whether Trump, as president, obstructed justice during the 22-month investigation.  Barr decided the findings did not warrant obstruction charges against the president.

In an online statement under the name DOJ Alumni, more than 700 former federal prosecutors, so far, who worked in Republican and Democratic administrations said evidence Mueller uncovered would have resulted in obstruction charges against Trump, were it not for the long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be charged with a criminal offense.

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says it is time for lawmakers to move on from the Russia investigation.

But top Democratic leaders immediately disputed McConnell. Senate Democratic leader Charles Schumer called McConnell’s remarks “an astounding bit of whitewashing,” while House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, “That’s just not a fact. The case is not closed.”
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The U.S. has recalled career diplomat Marie (Masha) Yovanovitch from her post as ambassador to Ukraine, timing the State Department says was aligned with the coming presidential transition in Kyiv.

But two key Democratic lawmakers claim the move was “a political hit job” with roots in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The State Department said the 60-year-old Yovanovitch, appointed by former President Barack Obama, is completing her three-year tenure in Ukraine “as planned,” although her term actually extended to Aug. 20.

The State Department said her return coincides with the planned June inauguration of comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy as the Ukrainian leader after his resounding defeat of President Petro Poroshenko in last month’s election.

​Democrats cry foul

Congressman Steny Hoyer, the majority leader in the House of Representatives, and Congressman Eliot Engel, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, disputed the State Department explanation for Yovanovitch’s early recall, saying she was a “dedicated public servant and a diplomat of the highest caliber who has represented the United States under both Republican and Democratic administrations.”

The lawmakers contended that “the White House’s outrageous decision to recall her is a political hit job and the latest in this administration’s campaign against career State Department personnel. It’s clear that this decision was politically motivated, as allies of President Trump had joined foreign actors in lobbying for the ambassador’s dismissal.”

Hoyer and Engel said that by recalling Yovanovitch “just mere months before her tenure in Ukraine was set to end, the administration is harming American interests and undermining American diplomacy.”

​Trump accusations

Yovanovitch’s time in Kyiv coincided with U.S. special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. One of the key figures in that probe was President Donald Trump’s one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was paid millions of dollars as a lobbyist for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine linked to deposed President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in a popular uprising in 2014.

Manafort has now been convicted of several financial crimes tied to his lobbying and has been sentenced to 71/2 years in prison.

Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko has alleged that information about payments to Manafort was revealed in an effort to help Democrat Hillary Clinton in her campaign against Trump, a contention that Trump adopted in recent months in an effort to disparage claims that it was Russia that was helping him.

“As Russia Collusion fades,” Trump said on Twitter in March, “Ukrainian plot to help Clinton emerges.”

The same month, Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted that the U.S. needed more ambassadors like conservative Richard Grenell, the Trump-appointed American envoy to Germany, and “less of these jokers as ambassadors” like Yovanovitch. “Calls Grow to Remove Obama’s U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.”

Hoyer and Engel called on the State Department to reverse Yovanovitch’s dismissal.

“In this period of transition, Ukraine needs gifted professionals like Ambassador Yovanovitch more than ever,” they said.
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A second Rhode Island town declared itself a so-called Second Amendment sanctuary Monday to oppose the governor’s push for stricter gun control laws.

The Hopkinton Town Council passed a resolution, 3 to 2. The Burrillville Town Council passed a similar resolution last month. The towns say they won’t enforce new laws they feel infringe on their constitutional right to keep and bear arms.

Four more towns are considering doing the same thing, and other jurisdictions nationwide have also adopted the term “Second Amendment sanctuary” in opposition to various new gun laws.

Hopkinton Town Council President Frank Landolfi said he doesn’t trust the state legislature and the governor to ensure the safety of residents and he doesn’t want new restrictions on where he can carry a gun, The Westerly Sun reported.

Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo wants a ban on guns in schools and a statewide ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The legislature is considering several gun-related proposals. Raimondo has said if the stricter gun laws pass, she expects every single city and town to follow them, “period.”

Republican state Sen. Elaine Morgan asked the five towns in her district, including Hopkinton, to declare themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries. Another Republican state lawmaker, Rep. Justin Price, praised towns for “standing up against the state’s infringement on their rights.” His district also includes part of Hopkinton.

The towns of Glocester, Richmond, Foster and West Greenwich are all considering similar measures, The Providence Journal reported.
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The head of the top law enforcement agency in the United States told lawmakers Tuesday he would not use the term “spying” to describe the agency’s court-approved surveillance work.

“Well, it’s not the term I would use, “FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Senate Appropriations Committee “Lots of people have different colloquial phrases.”

Wray’s comments are a departure from remarks made by his boss, Attorney General William Barr. Barr told a Senate Appropriations subcommittee in April, “I think spying did occur” on the Trump campaign and said, “Spying on a political campaign is a big deal.”

Barr’s language closely resembled that of President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly accused the FBI of spying during the election season.

While Wray acknowledged that people use different terms, he said his priority is ensuring the agency’s work is “done by the book.” Wray added he “personally” did not have any evidence the FBI conducted any illegal surveillance into any campaigns or into people associated with them.

The FBI director declined to further discuss the agency’s probe into the Trump campaign because it is part of an investigation conducted by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

 
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Almost 500 former U.S. Justice Department officials said on Monday in a joint statement that the Mueller report’s findings would justify obstruction charges against President Donald Trump if he were not currently occupying the White House.

U.S. Attorney General William Barr has said he found insufficient evidence in Mueller’s report to conclude that Trump obstructed justice. Special Counsel Robert Mueller himself made no formal finding one way or the other on that question.

“To look at these facts and say that a prosecutor could not probably sustain a conviction for obstruction of justice … runs counter to logic and our experience,” said the statement, signed by Justice Department lawyers who served Republican and Democratic presidents stretching back to the 1950s.

As of late Monday, 467 officials had signed the letter.

Mueller’s report unearthed numerous links between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and various Russians, but it concluded there was insufficient evidence to establish that the campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Moscow.

It also described attempts by Trump to impede Mueller’s probe, but stopped short of declaring Trump committed a crime.

Under a long-standing Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel policy, a sitting president cannot be charged with criminal activity.

“Each of us believes that the conduct of President Trump described in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report would, in the case of any other person not covered by the Office of Legal Counsel policy … result in multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice,” the statement said.

A Justice Department spokeswoman referred to prior statements by Barr, in which he said Mueller had not provided enough evidence to bring a successful obstruction case.

A Mueller spokesman declined to comment.

Among signers of the statement were Donald Ayer, who was the Justice Department’s No. 2 official under Republican President George H.W. Bush, and Bill Weld, a former head of the Justice Department’s criminal division under Republican President Ronald Reagan. Weld is making a bid to challenge Trump for the 2020 Republican presidential nomination.

Weld’s presidential campaign confirmed he signed the statement and Ayer said he also signed it.

The statement was coordinated by a non-profit, non-partisan group called Protect Democracy, which says it was formed “to prevent our democracy from declining into a more authoritarian form of government.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The statement comes as House of Representatives Democrats are threatening to hold Barr in contempt for not giving them a full, unredacted version of the Mueller report.
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Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has made it official: The administration won’t be turning President Donald Trump’s tax returns over to the Democratic-controlled House.

Mnuchin told Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., in a Monday letter that the panel’s request “lacks a legitimate legislative purpose” as Supreme Court precedent requires.

In making that determination, Mnuchin said he relied on the advice of the Justice Department. He concluded that the Treasury Department is “not authorized to disclose the requested returns and return information.” He said the Justice Department will provide a more detailed legal justification soon.

The move, which was expected, is sure to set in motion a legal battle over Trump’s tax returns. The chief options available to Democrats are to subpoena the IRS for the returns or to file a lawsuit. Last week, Neal promised “we’ll be ready” to act soon after Monday’s deadline.

Treasury’s denial came the same day that the House Judiciary panel scheduled a vote for Wednesday on whether to find Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena for a full, unredacted copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report. Fights with other House panels are ongoing.

“I will consult with counsel and determine the appropriate response,” Neal said in a statement Monday.

Neal originally demanded access to Trump’s tax returns in early April under a law that says the IRS “shall furnish” the returns of any taxpayer to a handful of top lawmakers, including the chair of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. He maintains that the committee is looking into the effectiveness of IRS mandatory audits of tax returns of all sitting presidents, a way to justify his claim that the panel has a potential legislative purpose. Democrats are confident in their legal justification and say Trump is stalling in an attempt to punt the issue past the 2020 election.

The White House and the president’s attorneys declined to comment on the deadline to turn over Trump’s returns.

Mnuchin has said Neal’s request would potentially weaponize private tax returns for political purposes.

Trump has privately made clear he has no intention of turning over the much-coveted records. He is the first president since Watergate to decline to make his tax returns public, often claiming that he would release them if he was not under audit.

“What’s unprecedented is this secretary refusing to comply with our lawful … request. What’s unprecedented is a Justice Department that again sees its role as being bodyguard to the executive and not the rule of law,” said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. “What’s unprecedented is an entire federal government working in concert to shield a corrupt president from legal accountability.”

But the president has told those close to him that the attempt to get his returns was an invasion of his privacy and a further example of what he calls the Democrat-led “witch hunt” — like Mueller’s Russia probe — meant to damage him.

Trump has repeatedly asked aides as to the status of the House request and has not signaled a willing to cooperate with Democrats, according to a White House official and two Republicans close to the White House.

He has linked the effort to the myriad House probes into his administration and has urged his team to stonewall all requests. He also has inquired about the “loyalty” of the top officials at the IRS, according to one of his advisers.

Trump has long told confidants that he was under audit and therefore could not release his taxes. But in recent weeks, he has added to the argument, telling advisers that the American people elected him once without seeing his taxes and would do so again, according to the three White House officials and Republicans, who were not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity.
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U.S. Attorney General William Barr faces the prospect Wednesday of a vote by a U.S. House committee to hold him in “contempt of Congress.” What does that mean? 

Congress has significant, if time-consuming, powers to demand witnesses and documents. One of these is the contempt citation.

Democrats in the House of Representatives are threatening to use it on multiple fronts, including against Barr for ignoring a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee seeking an unredacted version of the Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and President Donald Trump.

Trump and his administration are stonewalling several inquiries being led by House Democrats into his administration, his family and his business interests. Here is how the congressional subpoena, contempt and enforcement process works.

What is a subpoena?

A subpoena is a legally enforceable demand for documents, data, or witness testimony. Subpoenas are typically used by litigants in court cases.

The Supreme Court has recognized Congress’ power to issue subpoenas, saying in order to write laws it also needs to be able to investigate.

Congress’ power to issue subpoenas, while broad, is not unlimited. The high court has said Congress is not a law enforcement agency, and cannot investigate someone purely to expose wrongdoing or damaging information about them for political gain. A subpoena must potentially further some “legitimate legislative purpose,” the court has said.

What can Congress do to a government official who ignores a subpoena? 

If lawmakers want to punish someone who ignores a congressional subpoena, they typically first hold the offender “in contempt of Congress,” legal experts said.

The contempt process can start in either the House or the Senate. Unlike with legislation, it only takes one of the chambers to make and enforce a contempt citation.

Typically, the members of the congressional committee that issued the subpoena will vote on whether to move forward with a contempt finding. If a majority supports the resolution, then another vote will be held by the entire chamber.

The Democrats have majority control of the House; Trump’s Republican Party holds the Senate.

Only a majority of the 435-member House needs to support a contempt finding for one to be reached. After a contempt vote, Congress has powers to enforce a subpoena.

How is a contempt finding enforced?

The Supreme Court said in 1821 that Congress has “inherent authority” to arrest and detain recalcitrant witnesses. 

In 1927, the high court said the Senate acted lawfully in sending its deputy sergeant-at-arms to Ohio to arrest and detain the brother of the then-attorney general, who had refused to testify about a bribery scheme known as the Teapot Dome scandal.

It has been almost a century since Congress exercised this arrest-and-detain authority, and the practice is unlikely to make a comeback, legal experts said.

Alternatively, Congress can ask the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a federal prosecutor, to bring criminal charges against a witness who refuses to appear. There is a criminal law that specifically prohibits flouting a congressional subpoena.

But this option is also unlikely to be pursued, at least when it comes to subpoenas against executive branch officials, given that federal prosecutors are part of the branch’s Justice Department. 

“It would be odd, structurally, because it would mean the Trump administration would be acting to enforce subpoenas against the Trump administration,” said Lisa Kern Griffin, a former federal prosecutor and a law professor at Duke University. 

For this reason, in modern times Congress has opted for a third and final approach to enforcing a contempt finding: getting its lawyers to bring a civil lawsuit asking a judge to rule that compliance is required. 

Failure to comply with such an order can trigger a “contempt of court” finding, enforced through daily fines and even imprisonment, Griffin said.
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Capping a week in which her testy exchange with Attorney General William Barr went viral, Sen. Kamala Harris on Sunday told a crowd of thousands gathered at a dinner hosted by the country’s oldest NAACP chapter that Barr “lied to Congress” and ” clearly more interested in representing the president than the American people.”

The Democratic presidential candidate was the keynote speaker Sunday at the Detroit NAACP Fight for Freedom Fund dinner, attended by a mostly black audience of nearly 10,000.

As of Sunday, 4.8 million people had watched the C-SPAN video circulating on Twitter of Harris questioning Barr, catapulting her into the spotlight amid the crowded field of more than 20 Democrats and hammering a campaign theme that she is the candidate to “prosecute the case against Trump.”

During her remarks, Harris also said her approach to the 2020 race is about challenging notions of electability and who can speak to Midwesterners.

“They usually put the Midwest in a simplistic box and a narrow narrative,” Harris said. “The conversation too often suggests certain voters will only vote for certain candidates regardless of whether their ideas will lift up all of our families. It’s short sighted. It’s wrong. And voters deserve better.”

Harris’s appearance in Detroit highlights an underappreciated variable in Democrats’ 2016 losses across the Great Lakes region: declining support from black voters.

Michigan gave President Donald Trump his closest winning margin of any state, with the Republican finishing 10,704 votes ahead of Hillary Clinton. Much of the narrative focused on Clinton losing ground from Barack Obama’s 2012 marks in many small-town and rural counties dominated by middle-class whites.

Biden has been leading the polls, with a majority saying he has the best chance to defeat Trump. A Quinnipiac poll from last week showed Biden leading among Democratic candidates with 38 percent, while Harris was fourth with eight percent.

Yet it was heavily African American Wayne County, home to Detroit, where Clinton saw her single largest and most consequential dropoff. She got 78,004 fewer votes in the county — the anchor of Democrats’ statewide coalition — than Obama received in 2012, meaning that her Wayne County deficit from Obama was more than seven times the statewide gap separating her from Trump and Michigan’s 16 electoral votes.

Harris told the largely African-American audience that as president, she plans to double the Justice Department’s civil rights division, hold accountable social media platforms disseminating misinformation and cyberwarfare and address economic inequality for families and teachers.

Called “the largest sit-down dinner in the country,” boasting 10,000 attendees, this year’s dinner comes amid an already busy primary season, as Democrats are eyeing the battleground state of Michigan. Fellow 2020 Democratic contender Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey was last year’s keynote.

The Detroit NAACP chapter is the civil rights organization’s largest, and the city will host their national convention in July, where most 2020 Democrats are expected to appear. The Rev. Wendell Anthony, Detroit chapter president, said Sunday that “our very lives, our freedom” are riding on the 2020 election.

“This is about the soul of America,” Anthony said. “There’s some people that want to take us back 50 years. We ain’t going. They win when we don’t show up.”

Anthony said that while Harris’ appearance was not an endorsement, the energy at the dinner was “a signal to the nation that we are concerned about what’s happening in the country” and warned that “the stakes are too great for anybody to sit this out.”
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