“What you have,” says former IRS criminal investigator Martin Sheil, “is a pattern of constantly pushing the envelope, exploiting every tax advantage that the Internal Revenue Code legitimately provides.”
The president was able to pull this off because of decades of political pressure from the wealthy to recast the tax system in their favor, Shein says: “There are so many legal deductions that businesses — such as real-estate moguls — have lobbied for and obtained and that Mr. Trump is now exploiting.” Even if Trump is eventually found to have gone beyond the bounds of the law — if, for instance, IRS auditors ultimately reject the $70,000 that Trump deducted in hair-styling expenses — that would only be a civil matter, resulting in the imposition of a monetary penalty. Trump’s tax filings could put him in danger, Sheil says, is if they are contradicted by other financial filings that indicate the president knowingly misrepresented his finances on one or more of them.
