I have a memory from the fall of 1973. At the time I was working part-time as a professor’s assistant in the broadcast faculty at Ryerson University. I had one eye on the students’ work I was editing, and the other on a TV monitor of the news. Suddenly, I saw the face of U.S. Vice-President Spiro Agnew. Of all things he was standing with Frank Sinatra at a golf course in Los Angeles. A member of the media scrum asked Agnew about charges of tax fraud recently levelled at him.
“Malicious leaks,” Agnew spewed. “I will not resign if indicted,” and he repeated it. And the audience of well-wishers applauded.
In case you missed this one, in August 1973, Spiro Agnew (elected as Richard Nixon’s vice-president in 1968) had learned he was under investigation for bribery and tax evasion. Agnew had previously served as the governor of Maryland.
In fact, because I often visited relatives living in Maryland, I once saw him at the state legislature. Anyway, when I saw Agnew claiming “I am innocent of any wrongdoing” in front of the TV cameras, I remembered how astonished I’d felt.
An American vice-president facing tax fraud charges?
Eleven days later, after nearly a year-long investigation, during which time U.S. attorneys had demanded access to the vice-president’s bank statements, cancelled cheques and tax returns, Agnew announced he was resigning.
Federal authorities had worked out a plea deal in which Agnew left office, in return that all tax evasion charges be dropped. Millionaire Agnew was fined $10,000 and was given three years’ probation, and therefore avoided jail.
Dejà vu perhaps? For nearly as long as he’s been the president of the United States, and particularly during his impeachment, lawmakers have sought the tax returns of Donald Trump. Then, about a month ago, the New York Times announced that the president had paid a grand total of $750 in federal income tax in 2016 and that he’d paid nothing in any of the previous 10 years.
A bit of research shows that over the years, Donald Trump’s assets have served him well. His reality TV show The Apprentice paid him $427 million, his profits from holdings from Vornado buildings $176 million, and his rental income from high-end office space about $20 million per year. On the other side of the ledger, he poured money into golf courses, his Washington hotel, and other business ventures which his accountants say have lost hundreds of millions of dollars.
Those losses apparently offset his income tax, such that he paid no tax for four years. Oh yes, and somehow, he was entitled do receive a $73 million refund in 2010. And that’s currently the subject of an audit by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.
What must be most distasteful to average Americans, and the rest of us average folk for that matter, is why Trump’s base applauds him the same way Agnew’s base did. I remember my grandfather, a Greek immigrant who arrived in New York penniless in 1912, claiming (largely because Agnew was also Greek) that, “Mr. Agnew is an honest man.”
Worse, a few of my uncles, also hard-working restaurateurs, bakers, cooks and workers in other trades said, “There’s nothing wrong with dodging taxes.” In fact, in so many words, they claimed everybody should do that and more power to them.
I think I turned to my father, known in our family as the renegade thinker of that generation. He just threw up his hands and shook his head at his in-laws’ attitudes. He told me that dodging is an accounting thing, evasion is a crime.
I’ll be honest, back in 1991, when Prime Minister Brian Mulroney brought in the Government Services Tax (now the Harmonized Sales Tax), I hated it. Not that I had to pay it, but that as a freelance, self-proprietorship writer suddenly I had to become a part-time accountant – keeping a ledger of income and expenditure, profit and loss, and day-to-day business transactions.
I complained then that, “I was never trained to do this!” I still hate the tediousness of it, the fact that it takes me away from what I love most – writing – but I respect that it is the law of the land, and helps us live within our means and pay for some of the best privileges on the planet.
Call me weird, but I pay all my municipal, provincial sales, and federal income taxes willingly. I for one recognize that each dollar of those taxes improves my (our) quality of life, whether it’s the big stuff – such as health care, safety and the right to vote – or the mundane stuff – such as waste collection, road improvements and recreational space.
But I don’t imagine that people such as Donald Trump or Spiro Agnew have ever recognized privilege as anything other than wealth.
I still hate the tediousness of it, the fact that it takes me away from what I love most – writing – but I respect that it is the law of the land, and helps us live within our means and pay for some of the best privileges on the planet.