>> especially if [Trump ;s] going to bankroll the campaign himself <<
That meme rests upon another of Trump’s big exaggerations, to wit:
Even if he is as wealthy as Forbes and Bloomberg News have recently estimated, he doesn’t have the on-hand cash for a one-billion-dollar national campaign. His wealth is tied up mainly in illiquid real estate assets.
Moreover, if he tried to sell a lot of this property to raise cash, the liquidation values are likely to be significantly less than the current book values. Even worse, the sale proceeds would be subject to huge depreciation recapture taxes.
For example, let’s say you need to liquidate a real estate asset that’s appraised at one million. If you’re in a hurry, you’ll be lucky to get $800K or less. Then after you pay the depreciation recapture tax, you’re like to net something like $600K. Been there, done that!
Now let’s apply such numbers to Trump:
Forbes and Bloomberg have estimated his true net worth at around 2.5 billion. Let’s say he puts two billion of these assets up for sale. Since his campaign will need a lot of cash soon, he’s basically going to be in a “distress sale” situation. He therefore might get something like 1.6 billion for the properties.
Next, the IRS duns him for a 25% depreciation recapture. So he nets maybe 1.2 billion. One billion of this amount will be needed for his national campaign against Biden, Gore or Kerry.
Bottom Line:
Trump is left with ca. $200K in cash to finance the alimony for Melania’s high life style, plus maybe $50 million per year cash flow from the assets he didn’t sell. Good luck with that!
(Don’t believe me? Just run the scenario by a CPA who specializes in large real estate transactions.)
I think we can safely assume that Mr. Trump knows a thing or two about finance. As it stands, right now he’s had to spend very little money since he’s gotten millions of dollars in free publicity from dominating the news cycle for weeks.