Cleveland, United States:
US President Donald Trump said today he “paid millions of dollars in taxes” during the first presidential debate in Cleveland amid a confrontation with Democratic challenger Joe Biden.
A New York Times said last week that Trump paid just $ 750 in federal income tax in 2016, the year he won the election. The report, which cited tax return data spanning more than 20 years, said he had not paid any income tax in 10 of the previous 15 years because he said he lost a lot. more money than he earned.
Trump, however, dismissed the report as “fake news”.
During the first presidential debate, moderator Chris Wallace questioned the US president again on Tuesday about the New York Times report.
Trump was pressed to say how much he paid in taxes but declined. “I paid millions of dollars in taxes. Millions of dollars in income taxes,” he said. Then he said he tried to avoid taxes as much as possible, referring to the tax breaks he and others were trying to claim.
“I don’t want to pay tax,” he said. He added that private investors like him, “unless they’re stupid, they go through the laws and that’s what it is.”
Shortly before the debate, he wrote on Twitter: “I paid several million dollars in taxes but I was entitled, like everyone else, to depreciation and tax credits.”
“I am extremely under indebted – I have very little debt relative to the value of assets,” the US president said in a tweet on Tuesday.
