Schedule E 2011: Fill & Download for Free

It appears he was “screwed” by the AMT.But without seeing all of the statements referenced in Trump’s 2005 form 1040 as well as the previous years, it’s hard to say for sure exactly how he ended up paying $36 million federal income tax on a net income of $49 million.In particular I would want to see his schedule A, schedule D, his schedule E and his schedule C and all other attached documentation including his STATEMENT 1, referring to and presumably detailing his operating losses of $103 million that year.However - Trump payed an ordinary tax rate of about 12% on the net income of $49 million minus deductions of $17 million, and the rest was payed as Alternative Minimum Tax, which is written down on line 44 of his 1040.The real mystery to me is how he managed to pay a rate of 12% on his net income, given that the top marginal rate was actually about 36% that year, and Trump’s AGI should be in the range where he is very nearly reaching that overall asymptotic tax rate, even after deductions. That, I don’t understand.He’s paying a rate which approaches. actually it’s better than, the rates which Mitt Romney achieved in 2010–2011, only Romney had much of his income in the form of carried interest, dividends and investments. So a lot of Romney’s income was taxed at the most favorable capital gains rate. Romney’s net income was much smaller and he had only a relatively small income from personal businesses. So far as I know Trump could not take advantage of the most favorable tax treatment for more than the $32 million that he declared in capital gains on his 1040.For example - suppose that Trump had claimed no losses and taken only the standard deduction in 2005.Then it looks as if his income should have required him to pay 36% of $150 million, or about $50 million. He did considerably better than that, but he still ended up paying a rate of about 25% on his gross income. So one might ask: Why did Trump choose to write off such a large loss in 2005?He had 18 years. starting in 1995, during which he could still carry that $900 million loss forward. $900 million / 18 = $50 million on average. So what accounts for the rest of that $103 million?Perhaps this year has a larger write off just because Trump had much more income to play with that year. Or perhaps there are other losses involved. It’s hard to say without seeing Statement 1.Trump listed about $17 million in itemized deductions. Much of that may have been disallowed under the AMT, and in addition he was not allowed to apply the full $103 million that he claimed in net operating losses. He had to add all of that income back in, when he started calculating his AMT. You will have noticed that we don’t have the tax preparer’s worksheet and we don’t have Trump’s form 6251.Alternative Minimum Tax: Common Questionshttps://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f6251.pdf(See line 10 of IRS 6251 above.)$70 million of the $150 million gross income was declared under real estate and S corporations, etcetera … the rules become very complex there.What can be said, if this is indeed an authentic document and this form is the same as the form that he submitted to the IRS, that it was not altered before being signed and submitted, and he actually payed all that tax, is that his income tax form in 2005 does not look like the income tax form of either a good businessman or a multi-billionaire, and certainly not a TEN BILLIONAIRE, as Trump claimed to be, in all caps, in his Federal Election Commission financial disclosure forms recently.Based on the taxable interest income that he declared on that form I would put his holdings in cash or short term bonds in 2005 at about $200 million. Based on his gross income, it is just barely plausible that he was worth a total $1 billion that year.But I would put it lower, I would take his net income and subtract the tax he payed. That puts him at about $13 million in net earnings for the year. Multiply that by a factor of ten, and add it to his holdings in cash and short term bonds and I would say he was probably worth on the order of $300–400 million that year, and those are likely pretty hard numbers. That’s a minimum.I would say he was worth $1 billion assuming that the $49 million represents a total 5% return on his net worth.If he was worth $10 billion that year, then $49 million would represent a pitiful return on investment. Furthermore, if he were a multi-billionaire, I would expect to see far more of his net worth being actively invested, say in stocks (the stock market was up 12% in 2004 and 5% in 2005), than there is evidence of on that form. He had only $32 million in realized capital gains.He should have been able to make $500 million on ten billion dollars in that year without even thinking.It just doesn’t add up. It takes a very long time to get to $10 BILLION even on a net annual income of $150 million.In all likelihood 2005 was one of Trump’s best years. This form has probably been been released by Trump himself or sources close to Trump because the news is going badly for him of late and he probably thought it would be a good time to rehabilitate the buzz about him being wealthier than God himself right now.But we really need 30 years worth of his tax returns with all supporting documentation to begin to say with any degree of certainty what he might be worth. Nothing less will suffice.The most interesting information of course would be what were the sources of income and what corporations and entities are named.

The IRS likes to keep their data mining techniques close to the vest. However, reading the daily trade periodicals e-mailed to tax professionals has helped me glean the following.An IRS task force spawned circa 2017 trained a group of revenue agents to specialize in pursuing MLM losses reported on Schedule C. People who report a pattern of more expenses than losses for little to no revenue from Rodan & Fields, Herbalife, Forever Living, Amway, Avon and many others are specifically targeted by the task force.The tax courts have developed a nine point test to decide if a business is a fabricated tax shelter or legitimate pursuit of profits.Business or hobby? The nine factorsThe IRS replaced Lyndon Baines Johnson era mainframes around 2010. Since 2010, the IRS has received special modernization provisioning of several million per year from Congress specifically designated to allow the IRS to pay above maximum IRS wages to hire IT experts to modernize data mining algorithms. After using the new data mining capability between 2011 and 2015 to pluck the largest lowest hanging fruit in tax collection holes, the IRS has methodically augmented, each year, its toolkit to pursue less massive abuses of the tax laws on a wider scale. Trends that the IRS previously ignored are now flagged and acted upon by the IRS.If your losses are from the ten years it takes to make an orchard profitable, you have little to worry about. If your revenues don’t trend upward each odd year from year one while your expenses appear futile in efforts to generate revenue, you will be noticed by the IRS. Inconsistencies from year to year in which areas expenses are reported in get flagged to stop processing a return under the excuse of identity protection.The average workday at the IRS sees roughly 36,000 notices of deficiency (NOD) mailed to taxpayers. Note the NOD isn’t officially an audit which is now 2/3rds done via mail also. Before large scale data mining, the NOD predominantly recalculated tax liability for data input discrepancies between tax returns filed and data from from third party K-1 or 1099 documents. Now the IRS notes discrepancies against W-2 filed by employers with the SSA, state drivers license databases, county tax assessor data, department of education databases, state attorney general databases, and more are being added each year. The older tax preparation businesses that relied on the old IRS blind spots to falsify large refunds for clients have been methodically shut down with the owners placed in jail. The increase of e-filing and IRS data mining now has the notices of deficiency increasingly recalculating tax for denied expenses unless the taxpayer produces accurate third party validation to vouch the reported expenses to the nearest dollar. Anything less than timely accurate responses triggers expansion in scope of denied expenses. Delayed and disorganized taxpayer responses are largely ignored without appealing to the tax court or taxpayer advocate office due to staffing cut-backs Congress imposed in reaction to the Lois Lerner scandal IRS Scandal Fast Facts. Now too few IRS resources exist to read tax payer responses or even answer the phone. average hold times IRS.The IRS doesn’t interact with the public on weekends or holidays and is largely inaccessible during normal work hours. Chances of resolving issues with the IRS can be slim without special access to IRS staff, systems and protocols granted to CPAs, attorney’s, and to some extent, enrolled agents who also prepare taxes for the public. Large adjustments by the IRS in your tax liability could get you trapped into continuous annual audits until you manage to report four years in a row without any adjustments. Risking the wrath of the more sophisticated IRS is irrational.Unless you can convince the world your expenses were necessary, customary and reasonable towards a legitimate pursuit of profits, don’t delude your self with denial of the realities outlined above.

Today's investors and active traders have access to a growing number of trading instruments, from tried-and-true blue chips and industrials, to the fast-paced futures and forex markets. Deciding which of these markets to trade can be complicated, and many factors need to be considered in order to make the best choice.The most important element may be the trader's or investor's risk tolerance and trading style. For example, buy-and-hold investors are often more suited to participating in the stock market, while short-term traders, including swing, day and scalp traders, may prefer markets where price volatility is more pronounced. In this article, we'll compare investing in the forex market to buying into blue chip stocks, indexes and industrials.Forex Vs. Blue ChipsThe foreign exchange market is the world's largest financial market, accounting for more than $4 trillion in average traded value each day as of 2011. Many traders are attracted to the forex market because of its high liquidity, around-the-clock trading and the amount of leverage that is afforded to participants.Blue chips, on the other hand, are stocks from well-established and financially sound companies. These stocks are generally able to operate profitably during challenging economic conditions, and have a history of paying dividends. Blue chips are generally considered to be less volatile than many other investments, and are often used to provide steady growth potential to investors' portfolios.Volatility is a measure of short-term price fluctuations. While some traders, particularly short-term and day traders, rely on volatility in order to profit from quick price swings in the market, other traders are more comfortable with less volatile and less risky investments. As such, many short-term traders are attracted to the forex markets, while buy-and-hold investors may prefer the stability offered by blue chips.Leverage is another consideration. In the United States, investors generally have access to 2:1 leverage for stocks. The forex market offers a substantially higher leverage of up to 50:1, and in parts of the world even higher leverage is available. Is all this leverage a good thing? Not necessarily. While it certainly provides the springboard to build equity with a very small investment - forex accounts can be opened with as little as $100 - leverage can just as easily destroy a trading account.Trading HoursAnother consideration in choosing a trading instrument is the time period that each is traded. Trading sessions for stocks are limited to exchange hours, generally 9:30am to 4pm Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday with the exception of market holidays. The forex market, on the other hand, remains active round-the-clock from 5pm EST Sunday, through 5pm EST Friday, opening in Sydney, then traveling around the world to Tokyo, London and New York. The flexibility to trade during U.S. Asian and European markets, with good liquidity virtually any time of day, is an added bonus to traders whose schedules would otherwise limit their trading activity. (Just because the forex market trades 24 hours a day doesn't mean you have to. See How To Set A Forex Trading Schedule.)Forex Vs. IndexesStock market indexes are a combination of similar stocks, which can be used as a benchmark for a particular portfolio or the broad market. In the U.S. financial markets, major indexes include the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), the Nasdaq Composite Index, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (S&P 500) and the Russell 2000. The indexes provide traders and investors with an important method of gauging the movement of the overall market.A range of products provide traders and investors broad market exposure through stock market indexes. Exchange-traded funds (ETFs) based on stock market indexes, such as S&P Depository Receipts (SPY) and the Nasdaq-100 (QQQQ), are widely traded. Stock index futures and e-mini index futures are other popular instruments based on the underlying indexes. The e-minisboast strong liquidity and have become favorites among short-term traders because of favorable average daily price ranges. In addition, the contract size is much more affordable than the full-sized stock index futures contracts. The e-minis, including the e-mini S&P 500, the e-mini Nasdaq 100, the e-mini Russell 2000 and the mini-sized Dow Futures are traded around the clock on all-electronic, transparent networks.VolatilityThe volatility and liquidity of the e-mini contracts is enjoyed by the many short-term traders who participate in stock market indexes. The major equity index futures trade at an average daily notional value of $145 billion, exceeding the combined traded dollar volume of the underlying 500 stocks. The average daily range in price movement of the e-mini contracts affords great opportunity for profiting from short-term market moves.While the average daily traded value pales in comparison to that of the forex markets, the e-minis provide many of the same perks that are available to forex traders, including reliable liquidity, daily average price movement quotes that are conducive to short-term profits, and trading outside of regular U.S. market hours.LeverageFutures traders can use large amounts of leverage similar to that available to forex traders. With futures, the leverage is referred to as margin, a mandatory deposit that can be used by a broker to cover account losses. Minimum margin requirements are set by the exchanges where the contracts are traded, and can be as little as 5% of the contract's value. Brokers may choose to require higher margin amounts. Like forex, then, futures traders have the ability to trade in large position sizes with a small investment, creating the opportunity to enjoy huge gains - or suffer devastating losses.Trading hoursWhile trading does exist nearly around the clock for the electronically traded e-minis (trading ceases for about an hour a day to enable institutional investors to value their positions), the volume may be lower than the forex market, and liquidity during off-market hours could be a concern depending on the particular contract and time of day.Tax TreatmentWhile outside the scope of this article, it should be noted that various trading instruments are treated differently at tax time. Short-term gains on futures contracts, for example, may be eligible for lower tax rates than short-term gains on stocks. In addition, active traders may be eligible to choose the mark-to-market (MTM) status for IRS purposes, which allows deductions for trading-related expenses, such as platform fees or education. In order to claim MTM status, the IRS expects trading to be the individual's primary business; IRS Publication 550 and Revenue Procedure 99-17 cover the basic guidelines on how to properly qualify as a trader for tax purposes. It is strongly recommended that traders and investors seek the advice and expertise of a qualified accountant or other tax specialist to most favorably manage investment activities and related tax liabilities.The Bottom LineThe internet and electronic trading have opened the doors to active traders and investors around the world to participate in a growing variety of markets. The decision to trade stocks, forex or futures contracts is often based on risk tolerance, account size and convenience. If an active trader is not available during regular market hours to enter, exit or properly manage trades, stocks are not the best option. However, if an investor's market strategy is to buy and hold for the long term, generating steady growth and earning dividends, stocks are a practical choice. Regardless of which instrument(s) a trader or investor selects, the decision should be based on which is the best fit.**Feel free to comment on the answer below or send us a message on Forexgdp if you have more questions!**Read more: Should You Trade Forex Or Stocks?