Wasted time in the debates, on air and in the press talking about the republican presidential candidate’s tax returns has made it obvious how much the media and politicians lack practical business experience.
It doesn’t matter how many MBAs are tucked under one’s belt if you’ve never actually overseen the growth, and cutback, of an enterprise, which is precisely the problem with the majority of “experts” attempting to dissect Donald Trump’s tax returns from 20 years ago. They are deficient of the one element that could give them credibility – actual experience as an entrepreneur. And, sadly, revulsion for not just wealth but the willingness to go out on a limb to create it is coming from both sides of the aisle.
Anyone who has run a business understands depreciation, write-offs and profit margins as integral to making or breaking their hard-fought efforts at success. And in the modern world of progressive taxation (which the Founders of this nation never intended to be instituted) a business lives or dies by sharp utilization of the tax laws, which means hiring good accountants in this day of a 75,000 page federal tax code. If an entrepreneur doesn’t take advantage of the write-offs available, he or she would likely drown in overpayments to government even while losing capital investments due to any number of variables, which, in Trump’s case, was a deflating real estate market.
How do I know? I published a real estate magazine in California at the time and witnessed the boom of the ‘80s turn into an overvalued, overbuilt market that crashed in the mid ‘90s. Walking through neighborhoods you could count numerous foreclosures on every block and several developers closed up shop, many homes left half-constructed. One luxury home development in the area ended up being used as a backlot bombing location for one of the “Lethal Weapon” movies. That’s one way to demolish a failed housing tract and collect a little cash to help pay off burgeoning debt.
This kind of circumstance is just one of numerous scenarios entrepreneurs confront in the world of providing the public with goods and employment. Reorganization bankruptcy used to be invoked as a last-ditch effort to keep a business operating and jobs open. Tax incentives were and are used regularly to the same end, to continue the flow of products and services while saving employment.
The economy can’t run on closed stores and dwindling job numbers. When a business suffers a setback and profits are offset by losses for which tax credits can be taken over a period of years, the entrepreneur is given the opportunity to rebuild while keeping operations going and workers employed. To levy taxes on non-existent profits by applying some voodoo formula that only government bureaucrats could devise, is to shut-off future tax collection and create employment deficits. Pretty much the situation President Obama’s policies have instituted with overburdening every business, working man and woman with a healthcare tax or fine, whichever it seems more convenient to call it. What it can be called is a pathetic 1.5% growth in the economy – hardly growth at all.
Out of the ashes of loss or bankruptcy success often arises.
My own father was forced to file bankruptcy due to overwhelming debt from years of medical bills accumulated by my mother’s illness before she passed. It took another decade but with a new start our family built (every one of us worked in the enterprise) a publication that grew into the largest independently owned advertiser in the United States when it sold 20 years after its inception. It took hard labor and more than one do-over to get that phoenix to fly, but soar it did. The papers supplied jobs and retirement plans for dozens of individuals and taxes were always paid appropriately.
Unfortunately, people without motivation will complain about another’s success despite the proper application of business practices and tax laws to launch or rebuild a business, creating hundreds and thousands of jobs for those who want to work.
Let the talking heads, blogging hands and dissatisfied underemployed and overeducated take it upon themselves to take a stab at entrepreneurism. Then perhaps they’ll appreciate what it takes to get an enterprise off the ground and participate in building this nation’s economy rather than fleecing it.
Former newspaper publisher, A. Dru Kristenev, grew up in the publishing industry working every angle of a paper, from ad composition and sales, to personnel management, copy writing, and overseeing all editorial content. During her tenure as a news professional, Kristenev traveled internationally as a representative of the paper and, on separate occasions, non-profit organizations. Since 2007, Kristenev has authored five fact-filled political suspense novels, the Baron Series, and two non-fiction books, all available on Amazon. Carrying an M.S. degree and having taught at premier northwest universities, she is the trustee of Scribes’ College of Journalism, which mission is to train a new generation of journalists in biblical standards of reporting. More information about the college and how to support it can be obtained by contacting Kristenev at cw.o@earthlink.net.
ChangingWind (changingwind.org) is a solutions-centered Christian ministry.
