U.S. President, Donald Trump, paid $38m (£31m) in income tax on more than $150m (£123m) income in 2005, a leaked tax return reveals.
Two pages of the tax return were revealed by US broadcaster, Rachael Maddow, on MSNBC, triggering an angry response from the White House which said publishing the tax return was illegal.
Mr Trump refused to release his tax returns during the election campaign, breaking with a tradition held since Richard Nixon.
According to the Daily Mail, Maddow said that the 2005 document had been obtained by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, David Cay Johnston, Maddow said.
The White House went on to say that Trump paid $38 million on an income of $150 million that year, in addition to sales and excise taxes and employment taxes.
Johnston told Maddow that the documents were placed in his mail box by an unknown party, adding that so long as they are not solicited, neither he nor Maddow had done anything illegal.
Maddow added that the First Amendment protected her right to report on the documents.
He also speculated that Trump might have leaked the documents himself, saying he had done so many times before ‘when it was in his interest’.
The documents show Trump and wife Melania paying $5.3 million in regular federal income tax, at a rate of less than 3.5 per cent.
He also paid $31 million in the ‘alternative minimum tax,’ which is something that Trump has previously said he wanted to abolish.
The documents also show that Trump was continuing to benefit in 2005 from the $916 million loss he reported in 1995, a trick that was closed by Congress in 1996.
‘If we didn’t have the alternative minimum tax,’ Johnston said, ‘he would have paid tax at a lower tax rate than the poorest people in this country.’
The Trumps made $418,000 a day, he said, while paying the equivalent tax of a middle-class American couple, having received a 20 per cent ‘discount’ on his taxes.
He added that the $38 million given by the White House was artificially inflated.
Johnston also said the document only describes the types of income, not their sources, and asked who had paid him.
Trump has associated with both US and Russian criminals during his life, he added.
