Revelations into US President Donald Trump's long-concealed tax records may cost him his blue-collar credibility in the lead-up to the election, according to a politics professor.
An investigation into the former television personality's dubious taxes by the New York Times has revealed hundreds of millions of dollars in debt, an audit battle and years of tax avoidance.
The New York Times found the business magnate paid just US$750 in federal income taxes the year he won his presidency. In Trump's first year in the White House, he again paid US$750.
In 10 of the 15 years prior, Trump had paid no income tax at all, largely due to him losing significantly more money than he earned.
Professor of International Relations at the University of Otago, Robert Patman, says the discoveries unearthed by the Times may lose Trump his long-standing appeal to blue-collar voters - built in part on his projected 'self-made' status, anti-immigration rhetoric, and promises to boost working-class wages.
The President's appeal to working-class voters has been well-documented, with a Washington Times opinion piece from the year of his election dubbing Trump 'a working-class hero'. Following the environmental policies of the Obama administration, industrial regions threatened by the disfavouring of coal were rallied by Trump's calls to bring back blue-collar jobs.
In a White House press release from January, it claimed America's working-class had seen the largest growth under the Trump administration, with the net worth held by the bottom 50 percent of households increasing by 47 percent - more than three times the rate of increase for the top 1 percent of households.
"I think this is the most damaging thing about the revelations," Patman explained to The AM Show on Tuesday morning.
"It cuts across the projected narrative of Mr Trump as being the representative of ordinary people - someone they can identify with, a person dedicated to getting a better deal for the blue-collar worker."
The investigative report revealed Trump is personally responsible for loans and other debts totalling US$421 million, with the majority of it coming due within the next four years.
"He has not divested himself of his business concerns while he's been President - he's earned close to $500 million since being President - and he's paid very little tax," Patman said.
"It just cuts across the narrative that he's a person who is independently successful, a self-made billionaire - in fact he's got $421 million owing in the next four years that's due to be paid. That raises questions about how independent he is in his decision-making as President."
Despite the ongoing financial inspection into Trump's company accounts, there was "nothing" preventing the President from being forthcoming and offering some transpacery on his secretive tax records, says Patman.
"Mr Trump has bought this on himself... he said that's because he's subject to an audit, which he is, but there's nothing to prevent him from giving his version of his taxes while that audit is going on."
He says The Times' decision not to disclose its source or publish the documents it obtained implies the material may have been leaked from within the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Trump is currently campaigning for his second term as US President, the election date set for November 3. The Republican candidate is competing against Democratic nominee Joe Biden, who served as Vice President under Barack Obama's administration from 2009 to 2017.
