Actually it's pretty common for a business to post paper losses for a very long time before turning a profit. Or does that mean that Facebook (0 taxes ever), Uber (losing almost 1 Billion dollars a quarter), Google (0 taxes), Snapchat (lost 2.2 Billion its first year on the exchange) are all bad businesses? How about Amazon, nearly 20 years before their first posted profit?
Uber is losing billions: Here's why investors don't care
You reinvest everything you can into the business so that you lose money, that gives you something called "carry forward" that can be used to offset taxes when you do start making a profit. Up to 20 years of losses can be carried forward and used to defray the taxes on your profits.
How to Carry Forward Losses You're a fool if you file profits and pay taxes before you are ready to go big. If you have expendable income, which Trump did at the time, you skip the salary and reinvest everything into the business. You post losses, big ones, especially if you have investors. Your payday comes when you either have an event (sale or investor buyout or IPO, etc) or you turn enough profit to use your carry forward as a bank account and avoid all of the taxes to take a big profit. If the business doesn't get to the event, then the business files bankruptcy and liquidates everything, leaving the owner free and clear to start another business and do it again.
The media is hyping this (again) and spinning it like Trump did something almost every big business in America doesn't do. Someone needs to call out the ultra-lib companies like those I mentioned and point out that they are doing exactly the same thing Trump did. In fact, many of them offshore their headquarters and contract themselves to work here in America, effectively moving the money offshore specifically to show losses or avoid US taxes.
American Companies Like Offshore Tax Havens Too