What do Rutgers students have to say about Trump's tax returns?
Former President Richard Nixon, who was impeached and resigned from office in 1974, did not release his tax returns to the public when running for president. Republican nominee Donald Trump is the first candidate since Nixon to do the same.
At the beginning of October, the New York Times received an anonymous letter containing three pages of Trump’s tax returns from 1995. The letter showed capital losses of more than $900 million. The Times speculated that Trump may have avoided paying income taxes for the past two decades.
While students should question Trump not paying his taxes, it should not deter their vote, said Brendan Henrici, a Rutgers Business School sophomore.
Whether Trump pays his income taxes or not, Henrici said he still pays all the money that is required by law.
“I look at it in two elements. One, he paid all of the taxes that he had to pay. Two, it’s a product of his profession,” he said.
Large scale real estate developers like Trump have the ability to claim significant tax write-offs as a result of business losses, he said.
Trump’s alleged lack of paid income tax is not negative, he said, but rather is a quality needed for our next president.
“Trump understands the system, and I think we need someone in office who understands the system from a different perspective," Henrici said.
And this reasoning is common. In 2015, three in four Americans were dissatisfied with the way the U.S. was being governed, according to a CNN/ORC survey.
Still, Cooper Strenz, a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore, said Trump should release his tax returns.
"He should not be hiding things from the public or endorsing loopholes in taxes," she said. “The fact that Trump is alluding to the fact that he does not pay some of his taxes is only encouraging bad behavior and reducing the amount of people that are going to want to pay their taxes."
Billionaires such as Trump should take responsibility for paying more in taxes than the average earner, she said.
"If you are a billionaire, you have a significant, steady income or you have losses like Donald Trump, but you are still making an incredibly larger percentage, more than the average person,” she said.
Today’s CEOs like Trump make more than 300 times more than the average American, according to research done by the Economic Policy Institute.
Focusing on whether Trump pays taxes is a distraction in the election, said Opal Via, a School of Arts and Sciences junior and Rutgers College Republicans member.
“The same can be said about Hilary’s email scandal which happened to be erased, excused and disregarded," he said. "These are personal problems of the candidates in which had trickled down into media to persuade voters."
The opinions of students in regard to political candidates are often skewed by the mainstream media as well as their environment, Via said.
“The average student knows a fair share of information about the election," she said. "However, I feel that the information which they are hearing about the candidates is biased."
Via said because Rutgers is a fairly liberal school, student are influenced by the views of the majority.
"(This) can be a problem if they do not listen to their opposing candidate’s plans and blindly give their votes to whom the majority agrees with,” she said.
Stephen Weiss is a School of Arts and Sciences sophomore majoring in philosophy. He is a contributing writer with The Daily Targum.
