NY Times: Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father

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NY Times expose of Trump Family financial information demonstrating how the myth of Donald Trump was created.

President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help.

But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

These maneuvers met with little resistance from the Internal Revenue Service, The Times found. The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.

The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.

The president declined repeated requests over several weeks to comment for this article. But a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Charles J. Harder, provided a written statement on Monday, one day after The Times sent a detailed description of its findings. “The New York Times’s allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” Mr. Harder said. “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which The Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate.”

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The findings are based on interviews with Fred Trump’s former employees and advisers and more than 100,000 pages of documents describing the inner workings and immense profitability of his empire. They include documents culled from public sources — mortgages and deeds, probate records, financial disclosure reports, regulatory records and civil court files.

The investigation also draws on tens of thousands of pages of confidential records — bank statements, financial audits, accounting ledgers, cash disbursement reports, invoices and canceled checks. Most notably, the documents include more than 200 tax returns from Fred Trump, his companies and various Trump partnerships and trusts. While the records do not include the president’s personal tax returns and reveal little about his recent business dealings at home and abroad, dozens of corporate, partnership and trust tax returns offer the first public accounting of the income he received for decades from various family enterprises.

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It's a lengthy piece, but well worth your time.

NY Times expose of Trump Family financial information demonstrating how the myth of Donald Trump was created.

 

I don't know. Why don't you start a thread about it instead of engaging in "What aboutism."

The issue here is that Donald Trump ran for President based on his alleged acumen as a fantastically successful self-made billionaire. There is apparently a lot of evidence that the President's story is not true. Furthermore, this apparently well-researched and verified investigation shows that the Trump family, including Donald Trump, engaged in a number of illegal tax evasion schemes, for which they may still be civilly liable. Moreover, the President's unwillingness to reveal his tax returns has always been suspicious, but now makes perfect sense if this reporting is accurate. It also make people wonder if he is still engaged in illegal tax evasion schemes, since that has been his pattern through almost all of his life.

If you don't mind that the President was and may still be a crook, then there is no basis for you to have any qualms about anyone else, at least, without being a hypocrite.

I look forward to your Carlos Slim thread.

 

That is not where the $413 million figure comes from. It comes from a lifetime of fund transfers to Donald Trump. He was "earning" $200,000/year as a toddler, for instance.

If you read that article, you will notice that the Trump family, especially Fred, Sr. and Donald Trump, sought friendly appraisals to value properties at an extremely low cost for tax reasons, yet sold the properties at values up to 16x higher than they were assessed. It ties in with our President's estimation of his wealth. He factors in his mood at the time, and apparently, who he is talking to. For the IRS, his property is worth pennies on the dollar. For Forbes magazine or his political campaign, his net worth is claimed to be much higher than it likely is.

And yes, those were "estimates made years ago" before the NY Times had reams of financial documents to review.

 

Regardless if Slim is "picking on" Trump and Slim is completely corrupt, there are still facts to be considered. Apparently the NY Times has an enormous amount of documentation.

Carlos Slim being a shady character does not mean that the President is not a shady character. They can both be crooks at the same time.

 

What information would change your mind? Specifically, what will it take?

 

So if the Independent Counsel returns with an indictment against the President, you will change your mind?

What about an extensive report from the Independent Counsel that details everything in the NY Times report and more?

 

You assert these transactions were legal. On what basis do you make that claim?

Many of us who are not socialists and not "entitled to other people's money" are also quite disgusted with it. If the allegations of illegal activity are true, then anyone who loves justice, goodness and truth should be quite concerned.

Fundamentally, this isn't about the "death tax," except that it was current tax law at the time of the events in these allegations. So you're good with stealing from the government because you don't like the tax laws?

So you are not surprised that Trump is likely crooked? Honestly, I'm not either. Why do you make excuses for criminal behavior?

I'm guessing you haven't bothered to read it. If you haven't, you have no basis to make your claim.

I realize that living in denial is more comfortable than dealing with reality, but it's time to wake up.