Since the 2016 presidential campaign, journalists at The New York Times and elsewhere have been trying to piece together Donald J. Trump’s complex and concealed finances. Now The Times has obtained 10 years of previously unrevealed figures from the president’s federal income tax returns. The tax numbers, for the years 1985 through 1994, paint a far bleaker picture of Mr. Trump’s deal-making abilities and financial condition than the one he has long put forth.
Mr. Trump became an unprecedented president — a businessman and reality television star with no government experience — and he broke with decades-old presidential tradition by refusing to release his income tax returns. Questions about what secrets they may hold — about his recent business dealings and the sources of his financing — only intensified with the Russia inquiry, and the Trump administration is now locked in a battle with House Democrats demanding the last six years of the president’s returns. On Monday, the Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, said he would not give a House committee access to the returns.
The newly revealed tax information covers an earlier period of Mr. Trump’s business career. And The Times did not obtain Mr. Trump’s actual tax returns. But it obtained printouts from his official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, from someone who had legal access to them. They represent the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes. And they show that during a tumultuous decade of fevered acquisition and spectacular collapse, Mr. Trump’s core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings — ran up $1.17 billion in losses.
[Listen to an episode of “The Daily” on the tax information.]
The White House’s response to the findings has shifted over time.