Other presidents had issues that would have warranted IRS examination. Franklin D. Roosevelt deducted losses from his “cotton plantation” in Warm Springs, Ga., and his “farm” in Hyde Park, N.Y. Eleanor Roosevelt failed to report more than $100,000 she received from her radio broadcasts. How did Lyndon B. Johnson, whose income came from a government salary, become one of the richest men ever to occupy the Oval Office, worth an estimated $20 million in 1963? (Again, that’s the equivalent of nearly 10 times that sum in today’s dollars.) Ronald Reagan used two cattle tax shelters to make his 1970 taxes negligible. Jimmy Carter’s taxes were sheltered by investment tax credits from his peanut farm, which reduced his 1976 tax to zero.
Imagine that.
