Long-Concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance, by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire (2020) 0.50

Type: Article · Used on: Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain.

Where to find it	The New York Times, September 27, 2020
Belief Y	Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain.	Truth 0.50

Beliefs this work bears on

#	Belief	Bears	Belief's truth
1	Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain. What it shows: Tax records obtained by reporters showed business losses, foreign income and large personal debts that a sitting president's public financial disclosure forms had not made clear, which is the kind of information a publication requirement would put in the open.	supports	0.50

The beliefs that cite this work, which way it bears on each, and what it shows there. A work earns its place by what it changes; whether it deserved to is argued below.

Quality ArgumentsHow media is scored →

Reasons to agree that the work makes its case well

#	Reason (pattern)	Truth	Conf	Link	Imp	Uniq	Score
Nothing here yet. Starter patterns: Accurate, Well reasoned, Well made, Primary sources.

Reasons to disagree

#	Reason (pattern)	Truth	Conf	Link	Imp	Uniq	Score
Nothing here yet. Starter patterns: Errors of fact, Weak reasoning, Poorly made, One-sided.

Total agree 0.00 · total disagree 0.00 · quality score 0.50

Quality is craft: is the work accurate, well reasoned and well made? Reasons here are about the work itself, never about whether the belief it speaks to is true.

Impact Arguments

Reasons to agree that the work has shaped the debate

#	Reason (pattern)	Truth	Conf	Link	Imp	Uniq	Score
Nothing here yet. Starter patterns: Widely cited, Changed minds on record, Reached a broad audience, Shaped policy.

Reasons to disagree

#	Reason (pattern)	Truth	Conf	Link	Imp	Uniq	Score
Nothing here yet. Starter patterns: Rarely cited, Preaching to the converted, Small audience, No trace in policy.

Total agree 0.00 · total disagree 0.00 · impact score 0.50

Impact is reach: has the work changed what people think, say or do about the topic? Reasons here are about influence, never about quality; a bad book can be influential.

Check table

1	The work	Long-Concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance, by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire (2020)
2	Type	Article
3	What it claims about the belief	Tax records obtained by reporters showed business losses, foreign income and large personal debts that a sitting president's public financial disclosure forms had not made clear, which is the kind of information a publication requirement would put in the open.
4	Computed quality	0.50 from 0 reason(s) to agree and 0 to disagree
5	Computed impact	0.50 from 0 reason(s) to agree and 0 to disagree
6	Bottom line, typed by the author after the tables above	Strong evidence that tax returns contain conflict-relevant facts beyond the disclosure form, but it is one official's records and says nothing about whether publication changes behavior.

The five steps, answered from the pages above. Only the one-sentence bridge and the bottom line are typed.

DefinitionsThe full explanation →

Quality: this page's truth score. Impact: the second score below. Y's page shows both on the work's row and multiplies them by Bears (a Type Media linkage page) and Imp (the work's importance page).
Truth of what the work says is not scored here: each finding it reports gets its own page in the Evidence Ledger.

Where This Page Is Used

Page	Table	As	Its truth
Requiring the president and members of Congress to publish their tax returns would reduce the use of public office for private gain.	media	a row	0.50

Every page that reads this one. One claim, one home, every use visible.

Scoring EngineTruth scores →

Quantity	Value	How
Reasons to agree, total	0.00	sum of the agree side
Reasons to disagree, total	0.00	sum of the disagree side
Quality score	0.50	(agree + weight x starting point) / (agree + disagree + weight), starting point 0.50, weight 1.00
Impact score	0.50	the same rule applied to the impact table
ReasonRank	0.0001	how much of the site depends on this page: rank 1427 of 2173. The share of a walk that starts at the 162 beliefs and steps to the pages they read, with a 0.85 chance of stepping on each time
Work value	0.0001	ReasonRank x (1 - confidence): how much settling this page would be worth to everything above it
Completeness	no	at least one scored reason on each side (an importance page: at least one interest; an interest page: both readings filled)

Cite this page Long-Concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance, by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire (2020). Idea Stock Exchange, media page long-concealed-records-show, truth 0.50, confidence 0%, revision 42c8344 of 2026-10-04. The revision is what makes this quotable: these numbers move as the argument is worked on, and rebuilding that revision reproduces them exactly.

Every number on this page as data: long-concealed-records-show.json. Constants: K = 1 · UNARG = 0.5 · DEFLINK = 1 · DEFIMP = 0.5 · DEFUNIQ = 1. A reason placed under a conclusion is presumed relevant until a linkage page says otherwise; the burden is on the challenger. The neutral start for importance, the wiki's own rule.

Every value here is computed from the tables above at build time. Nothing is typed.