Trump campaign defiant as tax questions swirl
Washington : Donald Trump's campaign remained defiant Monday as the Republican presidential candidate dodged questions that he may have paid no income tax for nearly 20 years.
Without admitting fault, Trump's top allies praised their candidate's business acumen following a bombshell report in The New York Times focusing on the real estate mogul's massive 1995 losses and his clever use of the US tax code.
The report comes as Trump and his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, have just five more weeks of campaigning ahead of the November 8 presidential election.
If true, the report is proof of the tycoon's "absolute genius," said former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, a key Trump surrogate.
"You have an obligation when you run a business to maximize the profits and if there is a tax law that says I can deduct this, you deduct it," Giuliani told ABC News Sunday.
Bernie Sanders, Clinton's vanquished Democratic presidential primary foe who now supports her, had a different view.
"If everybody in this country was a 'genius,'" he told ABC, "we would not have a country."
According to documents obtained by The New York Times, Trump declared a loss of nearly $1 billion on his 1995 income tax return, enabling him to legally avoid paying taxes for almost two decades.
Trump has refused to release his income tax returns, something US presidential candidates have done for four decades.
He has said the returns will be released after an ongoing federal tax authority audit is complete. Tax officials however say he is free to release the documents at any time.
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