White House photo

South Carolina taxpayers paid, on average, more than 10 times the income taxes reportedly paid by President Donald Trump in 2017, according to reporting by The New York Times.

Trump reportedly paid $750 in 2017, and paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years, according to the Times.

To put that in a local perspective, South Carolina taxpayers paid, on average, $10,258 in federal income taxes on 2017 earnings, according to the National Priorities Project, a Massachusetts-based think tank. South Carolina’s median household income was $51,015 in 2018, according to the Census Bureau.

The Times obtained the Trump tax returns after a years-long legal fight by the president to keep them under wraps. The disclosures show some Trump-run businesses generate large profits, but also sustain substantial losses.

In one of a series of articles about the disclosures published Sunday, Times reporters wrote:

“The tax returns that Mr. Trump has long fought to keep private tell a story fundamentally different from the one he has sold to the American public. His reports to the IRS portray a businessman who takes in hundreds of millions of dollars a year yet racks up chronic losses that he aggressively employs to avoid paying taxes. Now, with his financial challenges mounting, the records show that he depends more and more on making money from businesses that put him in potential and often direct conflict of interest with his job as president.”

As the news broke, South Carolina politicians reacted on social media:


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