You cannot tell anything from a tax return about a person's financial acumen. I made more money in years; I reported almost no income. In fact, in one year, when I made over $1 million in the year, the State of California tried to force me to accept Medicaid because my reported income was negative... I politely declined, but it took two phone calls and a letter to do so. How is that possible...

I am retired. Most of my income comes from real estate investments and the stock market. In a year the stock market and real estate is up... my unrealized income soars. Meanwhile, in a year the market is down, and the real estate market is down, my unrealized income plummets. Layer this with the tendency not to sell my winners to avoid the taxes but sell the losers to minimize my taxes and you would have no idea how I did by looking at my returns.

So, am I bad "investor" when I report little income and my unrealized income soars. Am I good investors, when I report income from asset sales even when my unrealized losses exceed those gains.

I think you make a great point in Trump's favor regarding why he did not want to release his returns. People looking at them think they have a clue about his "income" when all they have is record of his taxable income, gains, and losses, which have no relationship to his actual net increase or decrease in net worth due to unrealized gains and losses.

Final example, let's pretend Trump owns several multimillion-dollar properties like golf courses and hotels. Let's pretend that together they are worth say $10 billion and are appreciating at the rate of 5% a year or $500 million a year. Meanwhile, let's pretend he can take roughly $25 million in depreciation on the properties that shelters his income (this last number should be discoverable on his returns). Then his unrealized income in that year would be roughly $525 million more than his realized taxable reported income or loss.

So, in your report, how did you factor those things into your analysis?

Now let's pretend for a second, Trump licenses his name to hotels around the world. The licensing fees would clearly be incorporated in his company's return and say those fees are going up 5% a year. If his business is worth a 10X multiple, then ten times the increase in licensing fees is accruing to Trump as unrealized gains. So, how did you factor that into his income.

Now pretend, Trump for a second, does what he said, he did... attempts to minimize his taxes using legal tax sheltering techniques. How did you factor the impact of those things on is real income vs his reported income?

I think you have done a great job confirming why Trump was reluctant to release his tax returns. He understood the distraction that would flow from doing so, as well as the foolish attempt to do exactly what you are doing.

In my career, I have bought and sold well over 100 companies. I have always used the tax return as a "point of input" but never as a means to determine how much a company earned or how much a company is worth. Even audited financials leave a lot to be desired when a business has "assets". That is why valuing a company can take months of detailed due diligence and even then, you could get it wrong. Yet you feel capable of judging Trump's business acumen on something as unreliable as his tax returns... that says more about your business acumen than his...

Sorry for sounding harsh... but this foolishness by people who don't know what they are talking about is not very useful.