CLAIM: Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) said that “Donald Trump hasn’t paid any federal tax in the last 15 years.”
VERDICT: FALSE. This recycles an old claim about Trump’s taxes that has long been debunked.
Walz broke out a false claim at the vice presidential debate on CBS News on Tuesday night that Democrats made against Trump from 2015 to 2020, which is that he did not pay federal taxes. That is simply false.
Again and again — whether Rachel Maddow’s widely-mocked exposé on MSNBC in 2017, which showed that Trump had, in fact, paid significant taxes; or the New York Times‘ controversial report in 2020, which showed Trump had been telling the truth about disputes with the IRS — Democrats came up short in their attacks on Trump’s tax returns.
It is true that there were years when he only paid a nominal amount of federal tax — 10 out of 15 years, at one point in time, which may be the source for Walz’s false “15 years” claim — but Trump did pay more taxes in other years, and he did file tax returns. Trump simply did what other Americans do: find legal strategies to reduce his taxable income.
The claim that Trump had not paid taxes is a lie — just like the lie about then-Republican nominee Mitt Romney not paying taxes, which was gleefully spread by the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.