Want to be mad as hell?

Get in your car and drive down Main Street in Manteca.

Turn west on Northgate Drive.

Head past the Taco Bell and the old Kmart that has now become a U-Haul depository for people with more things than they know what to  do with.

At the four way-stop, turn left.

Drive a couple hundred feet and look around.

You have entered Crestwood Square. It is a development of about three dozen homes, mostly two-stories that are on small lots.

It clearly is  a neighborhood that falls within the definition somewhere on the lower end of the middle class spectrum.

It is not Trump Tower.

Nor is it 555 California Street in San Francisco, the 52-story Bank of America headquarters the Trump Organization owns with a Chinese in investment firm.

Back in 2008, there was a single man living in one of the houses in Crestwood Square. He had a solid job that he said paid $150,000. He owned — or more correctly — was buying a home the way most do with a mortgage.

This was when house prices were crashing down to earth.

You remember, don’t you?

People buying homes at zero percent down,.

Artificially low payments at the front end and then balloon payments five years into the loan.

Liar loans.

More than a few people who were getting into flipping homes not as a cautious investor but as if they were riding a hot streak at a craps table in Reno.

A lot of people were buying houses they couldn’t afford.

There was never a  day of reckoning to worry about as  prices would always be going up, right.

Just sell the home before the balloon payment hit, pocket huge profits and move to another craps table.

Before you knew it, house prices were plunging as the economy slowed.

Foreclosures started piling up faster than snow during a major winter storm on the Sierra crest.

Unlike the rest of us, that single man mentioned earlier was attuned to the details of the byzantine federal tax code constructed by Congress and translated into wording by those  versed in the world’s second most obscure language after Latin — IRS gibberish —  that often requires a small army of accountants and lawyers to translate along with the help of the court system.

This man zeroed in on an act of congress and a tax code provision.

If you are a real estate investor, as one former president of the questionably named United States of America as these days we seem to be anything but united on most things, your buddies on both sides of the aisle in Congress have heavily incentivized real estate investment and development.

The working theory, of course, is a tax code engineered to encourage such investments will help keep the economy humming.

Besides depreciation — accelerated and normal – that Democrats and Republicans alike have voted for in DC is the ability to write off losses against profits. Nowhere is that as acute as when it comes to real estate development.

Sometimes Congress “super accelerated” deprecation for specific business behavior and even toss in tax credits.

It is how a very profitable company like PG&E for a 10-year period through 2018 paid no federal taxes. During that decade they had $14.5 billion of income but enjoyed a net tax-rebate of nearly $1.7 billion thanks to tax credits.

The single Manteca man owed roughly $180,000 on his home. Meanwhile the market value was plunging toward $120,000.

He was what many call “upside down” or “underwater” when it came to his home. It meant he owed more money than  his home was worth.

Keep in mind that he had no trouble making his payments as he had a solid job with $150,000 of annual income.

Meanwhile, Congress was openly debating a tax law change that would allow people underwater on their primary residence to walk away from foreclosures without having to pay taxes.

Under federal tax law, if your home  is foreclosed with a $180,000 balance and the mortgage holder only gets $110,000 at auction for the property, the remaining $70,000 is taxable income based on IRS rules. It’s considered a taxable gift as it changed your balance sheet in a positive manner by $70,000.

This single man noticed on the other side of his neighborhood a home just like his that was in need basically of a paint job and some minor TLC that was listed as a short sale for $110,000.

He ended up buying the home as he could easily afford a second mortgage.

And then he waited.

The second Congress tweaked the tax rules for those caught in foreclosures in a bid to get the country out from under the housing crisis, he stopped making the mortgage payment on his first home.

Eventually it went into foreclosure.

He ended up with a carbon copy hone in the same neighborhood. He had a much lower monthly payment and he was free of tax consequences of the underwater portion of his original house.

Folks back in DC finally realized they had created a loophole in their rush to implement policy.

Six months after Congress acted, it was required that such foreclosure walkaways from taxable income required a lack of means test that had to be met.

Clearly, the single man had the means to  make payments not just on the home  that went into foreclosure but on both homes at the same time given a bank determined he had the income and credit rating to do so.

Be angry that Donald Trump did not pay federal taxes in 2020 although he paid roughly $1.1 million in 2018 and again in 2019.

But listen carefully to the howling. No one in a position to know better including his most staunch adversaries in Congress are claiming Trump’s horde of tax accountants and tax lawyers did anything illegal. It is a matter of fairness.

Guess who authorized all of the tax breaks and such that allowed such a low tax bill for Trump in 2018 and 2019 and wiped out all federal tax obligations in 2020?

Congress.

The blood on the tax code that allows such light tax bills for real estate moguls isn’t deep red nor is it deep blue. It’s purple.  The guilt, if you want to call it that, belongs to both Democrat and Republican lawmakers.

The non-partisan Tax Policy Committee estimated that 57 percent of United States households did not pay federal income taxes in 2021. Compare that to 44 percent in 2019 before the pandemic hit.

Keep in mind most, but not all, of those households likely can’t afford to do so not based on their lifestyle which involves making choices of how you spend your money but on the ability to afford the most basic needs in the least lavish manner.

The Tax Policy Center noted in 2021 that 95 percent of all federal taxes are paid by households with  incomes of $98,000 or more a year. Clearly even that is unevenly applied based on how Congress treats the income source  such as real estate development as well as generous tax liability deductions in their bid to pick winners and losers in the general economy.

If we want fairness and to make sure everyone pays “their fair share” of taxes, then what we need is an extremely streamlined income tax system based on the concept of a flat tax.

There are a lot of reasons you can be angry when it comes to Trump.

But if are disgusted by his zero income tax bill in 2020 and his two “light” years of $1.1 million annual federal income tax liability remember this: Trump and other billionaires, multi-millionaires or corporations such as PG&E can’t do the tax tango without a leading partner.

Be made as hell if you wish about Trump’s tax liability.

But make sure you direct the angry at the people who really made it legally possible for many people in the Northern San Joaquin Valley to have paid more federal taxes in 2020 than Trump did — the Democrats and Republicans in Congress.

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com