01:54Trump’s tax returns reveal that he paid $5.3m in federal income tax and an additional $31m in the alternative minimum tax, or AMT. The alternative minimum tax was created in 1969 (and amended in 1979) to address the fact that some of the uber-wealthy could use so many deductions and loopholes that they ended up paying zero federal income tax. People with high incomes have to calculate their taxes twice – once with all their deductions and once without many of them. The gap between those two figures can be enormous – as is made clear by these Trump tax returns, which show Trump would have paid just $5.3m without the AMT. “If we didn’t have the alternative minimum tax, he would have paid taxes at a lower rate than the poor who make less than $33,000 a year,” David Cay Johnston said on MSNBC about the returns.

Source: The Guardian March 15, 2017 01:00 UTC