Trump tax dodge is the norm, sadly - One tax law for the rich ...

THE New York Times revelation that the billionaire Donald Trump, by recording a loss of $916m — $1.4bn (€1.256bn) in today’s terms — in his 1995 tax returns, put himself in a position to legally avoid federal or state taxes for up to 18 years has inflamed opinion.

The old-school newspaper exposé has given Hillary Clinton’s campaign yet another opportunity to show that Trump is not by any stretch of even the most hinge-eyed imagination fit to serve as America’s next president.

Conversely, it has given his cheerleaders like the sad former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani an opportunity to describe him as a “genius” — but without explaining how a “genius” might lose such a vast sum. Maybe they confer that laureate because Trump used the stacked deck commonly referred to as a tax system to have that loss subsidised by a government that has collected $1.6 trillion in federal income taxes from some 77.5 million Americans already this year?