This is only in 2005, with Trump's earlier return famously showing that he paid no taxes at all. Here is Trump's tax return. He had business income of over $42 million, $32 million in capital gains for net capital gains for selling entities, while collecting $67 million for rent plus royalties. Unlike Trump's previous return, where he had huge depreciation expenses and paid no taxes, in 2005, no Taj Mahal-scale business of Trump's went bankrupt, and he was generally considered to be doing quite well.

If you're in real estate, deprecation expenses are bundled into the "other income" on line 21, which shows a $103 million loss. Property developers should always modest depreciation on this line but when depreciation repeatedly and very dramatically exceeds all rent and royalties income, there is a very good chance that the individual is lying about how fast their properties are losing value.

Lying about depreciation of properties is very easy to get away with when considering only a couple years of returns. It's very hard for an auditor to know if it's true that all of the properties have lost so much value. But, when an individual consistently claims that properties are dramatically losing value, and and consistently can boast about huge profits from selling those properties, then that individual is committing tax fraud. If an individual lies about depreciation to avoid paying hundreds of millions in taxes, then that individual can go to jail for a long, long time.

Yes, Trump insists that it's all legal to be taxed at rates ranging so far from 0% to 25%, but that assumes there is no hard-to-catch bullshit about properties losing value. It's likely that if all of Trump's business transactions are followed over years to decades, it will be revealed that his properties weren't dramatically depreciating at all, because when properties are sold years later it's relatively easy to investigate fraudulent depreciation claims.