40 minutes ago, swansont said:

LLCs, AFAIK. Relevant to discussing his business acumen 

I may be misunderstanding things, but the NYT article claims that:

Quote

Because his businesses were generally created as partnerships, the companies themselves did not pay federal income taxes. Instead their results wound up on Mr. Trump’s personal ledger.

Together with his payments to lenders I assumed that this would indicate personal liability of sorts, but perhaps I am misunderstanding some of the mechanics of it.

9 hours ago, CharonY said:

I may be misunderstanding things, but the NYT article claims that:

Together with his payments to lenders I assumed that this would indicate personal liability of sorts, but perhaps I am misunderstanding some of the mechanics of it.

I'm certainly no expert here; my use of terminology is based on my limited exposure to business dealings. 

Turns out LLC vs partnership is not the distinction I would have suspected, as LLCs can be partnerships. 

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/llc-filing-as-a-corporation-or-partnership

 

11 hours ago, swansont said:

LLCs, AFAIK. Relevant to discussing his business acumen 

From what we can read on Wikipedia page of LLC, it allows avoiding double taxation. In the normal corporation, there is corporate tax on income made by company, and then second tax on personal income of shareholder. In LLC it's not the case.

"Pass-through taxation (i.e., no double taxation), unless the LLC elects to be taxed as a C corporation."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow-through_entity

So, primary reason for choosing such model of company is smaller taxation, rather than expectancy of bankruptcy in advance during starting it up.

"According to a report published by Brookings in May 2017, in the early 1980s almost all business income in the United States was generated by C corporations. In terms of Income tax in the United States C corporations are taxed separately from their owners.[8]"

(...)

"By 2013, "only 44 percent of the income of business owners was earned through C-corporations."[8]"

(...)

"According to a September 2017 article in the New York Times, about "95 percent of companies in the United States are structured as pass-through entities, generating the bulk of the government’s tax revenues."[12]"

 

3 hours ago, swansont said:

I'm certainly no expert here; my use of terminology is based on my limited exposure to business dealings. 

Turns out LLC vs partnership is not the distinction I would have suspected, as LLCs can be partnerships. 

https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/llc-filing-as-a-corporation-or-partnership

 

Well, learned something today.