Trump started paying himself a salary of $1 million in 1995, and this ballooned over the decades because of agreements that guaranteed that he’d profit as the company was collapsing. The 2005 form was filed after the company’s first bankruptcy in 2004, and no forms are available past this point, as it went bankrupt again in 2009 and then filed for Chapter 11 in 2014. This problem of chairmen taking on billions in debt while they make a significant percentage as a salary and then let the company fail is common to many other enormous corporate collapses of the last decade, including the two biggest bankruptcy filings in America in 2008: Lehman Brothers ($691 billion) and Washington Mutual ($328).
Deregulation has meant that a chairman has unlimited power regarding how a company might attempt to make a profit and it is easier to manipulate this system than to make an honest sale, especially when it comes to gambling in investments or slot machines. In a quarter following Trump’s bankruptcy, 10-K shows that operating expenses were $328,578, which when it is combined with other expenses, was less than the revenues of $379,874; any sound business operator would have made cuts to have attempt to fix the crisis, but the spending continued, or at least this business should’ve closed as it was losing money just by keeping its doors open. These documents include curious details such as that the “Slot Win Percentage” for the casinos was 7.8%, a number gamblers can learn from. The occupancy rate for the hotel rooms in 2005 was 81.6%.
Figure 1: 1995 Corporate Long-Term Debt