US President Donald Trump finally released his Financial Disclosure today and there is no doubt that it is going to be analyzed minutely over the coming days in order to find anything that might have a whiff of any irregularity. However, the headline at this point is that the President has not released details about his tax returns for the period starting January 2016 in the financial disclosure.
A long-awaited document
Considering the fact that Donald Trump continually boasted about his credentials as a successful businessman and tough negotiator over the past couple of years, his financial disclosure was something that everyone must have been looking forward to.The document that runs to 98 pages was handed over to the Office of Government Ethics and released shortly thereafter.
It should be noted that this disclosure is voluntary in nature as pointed by Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary, in a statement.
Some of the eye-popping details from the document include the revelation that Trump gave up in excess of 500 positions before becoming President and in fact, he resigned from some of those a day ahead of his inauguration. On the financial side of things, the liabilities did not increase much from last year and more or less remained the same at around $315 million. However, something that would continue to bug the American public is that the President has not revealed his tax returns and that is something that remains unprecedented in American political history.
Business is booming
Aside from the refusal to disclose his tax returns in the financial disclosure, Donald Trump has made a clean breast of the conditions of his businesses. The 'resort related revenue' from the now famous Mar-a-Logo resort stands at $37,251,635 and the revenues from the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey stands at a cool $19,752,500.
It is interesting to point out that the President doubled the initiation fees for Mar-a-Logo to $200,000 from 2017 and it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out why. The revenues from Mar-a-Logo rose by $7.4 million.
The book 'Crippled America', written by the President back in 2015 generated royalties in the range of $1 million to $5 million.
However, a slightly strange entry is that of a 'pension' of $84,000 that he draws from the Screen Actors Guild. It is believed that this pension pertains to his long association with the popular television reality show 'The Apprentice'.
