Is it a loophole?

Donald Trump's 2015 taxes have been leaked. The media has been all over it. Apparently, a law that he wants to roll back forced him to pay close to 25 percent of his earnings that year. Without that law, his effective tax rate would have been around 3.5 percent.

The media keeps pointing out a loophole that Trump exploited. A law allows losses to be carried over to later years. There's a slight problem here. Is the carryover of losses really a loophole?

The general idea behind this form of carryover is that businesses do not necessarily fit the government's annual tax schedules. Without carryover, businesses with fluctuating revenues and expenses would be required to pay more in the long term than other businesses with steady profits. At least that's the idea. Technically, whether or not it works as intended is irrelevant to this discussion.

The media keeps insisting that Trump exploited a loophole, but they have not provided a single piece of evidence that this law was used in any manner other than why it was specifically created. Despite this reality, the media keeps deceiving the public. In fact, an argument could be made that the media is outright lying to the public when they refer to this law as a loophole.