US President Donald Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes the year he ran for president and in his first year in the White House, according to a New York Times report.

Trump is the only president in modern times who has not made his tax filings public.

The report alleged that the US president paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.

NYT said that it obtained tax records for Trump and his companies over two decades which reveal "chronic losses and years of tax avoidance".

Trump dismissed report as "fake news", reports BBC.

"Actually I paid tax. And you'll see that as soon as my tax returns - it's under audit, they've been under audit for a long time," he told reporters after the story was published on Sunday, reports AP.

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Trump has faced legal challenges for refusing to share documents concerning his fortune and business.

The Times said information in its report was "provided by sources with legal access to it".

The report came just days before Trump's first presidential debate with Democratic rival Joe Biden and weeks before the Nov 3 election.

A lawyer for the Trump Organisation, Alan Garten, and a spokesperson for the Trump Organisation did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on the report.

Garten told the Times that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate”.

In a statement to the news organisation, he said that the president "has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015.”

During his first general election debate against Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, Clinton said that perhaps Trump wasn't releasing his tax returns because he had paid nothing in federal taxes.

Trump interrupted her to say, "That makes me smart.”