Trump Tax Attorney: 'He Didn't Understand the Code'
by PHIL HELSEL, EMMA MARGOLIN and RICH GARDELLA
OCT 5 2016, 2:40 PM ET
nbcnews.com
An attorney who oversaw Donald Trump's income tax returns in the mid-1990s said the Republican presidential candidate had little interest in the tax code — contrasting with the billionaire's claim that he understood taxes "better than anyone" who had run for the White House.
"As far as I know, and that only goes through late '96, he didn't understand the code," said Jack Mitnick, a former tax adviser for Trump, in an interview with NBC's TODAY. "Nor would he have had the time and the patience to learn the provisions. That's a lifetime of experience."
[....]
Mitnick, however, told the TODAY show Tuesday that Trump was "not at all" involved in the 1995 filing.
"He was interested in the bottom line, not the detail," Mitnick said. "Staff under my supervision did his returns - he had no involvement in the preparation."
Mitnick, a CPA and attorney who did taxes for Trump from the 1960s to 1996, said that when Trump was married to Ivana, she was the one more likely to ask questions about how the taxes were prepared. Mitnick said that Trump's father Fred was very detail-oriented, while the younger Trump was more of a "concept" man.
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