NYTimes Accuses Trump Of Making Hundreds Of Millions From Tax Dodges And "Outright Fraud"

[Swordsmyth]

In a massive, front page story, the NYT has accused (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage)President Trump of participating in "questionable" and "dubious" tax strategies "including instances of outright fraud" that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents and allowed him to accrue millions of dollars in additional wealth from his father's real estate empire "much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s."
As one of the authors, NYT reporter Susanne Craig explains, she and Russ Buettner, David Barstow "got our hands on a massive trove of confidential docs - including 200 tax returns - from Fred Trump’s empire. We found Donald Trump received hundreds of millions from his dad, some of it via fraudulent tax schemes."

NEW: Russ Buettner, David Barstow and I got our hands on a massive trove of confidential docs - including 200 tax returns - from Fred Trump’s empire. We found Donald Trump received hundreds of millions from his dad, some of it via fraudulent tax schemes. https://t.co/9is4ZcpOY4
— Susanne Craig (@susannecraig) October 2, 2018 (https://twitter.com/susannecraig/status/1047202603053056000?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw) The NYT reported that Trump and his siblings set up a "sham" corporation to help disguise otherwise taxable income that came from gifts from their parents. The president also allegedly helped his father take improper tax deductions that amounted to millions of dollars, with the Internal Revenue Service reportedly providing little pushback against the Trumps' reported tactics.
The Times' investigation founds 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. And, in what will attract the most attention, the newspaper wrote that Trump's behavior amounted to fraud in some cases.
The NYT reports that records indicate that Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions; he is also said to have helped formulate strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings
The Times interviewed former employees and advisers to Trump’s father and reviewed more than 100,000 pages of documents related to the Trump family business, including bank statements, financial audits and invoices.
Charles Harder, an attorney for the president, said in a statement to The New York Times that allegations of tax evasion are “100 percent false,” adding that Trump “had virtually no involvement” with the tax strategies used by his family, and instead delegated those tasks to others. Harder also implied that the newspaper could face a defamation lawsuit if it suggested Trump participated in a fraudulent tax scheme.

“There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which The Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate,” he said. “President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters,” he continued, saying the president had delegated those tasks to relatives and tax professionals. “The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals to ensure full compliance with the law.”
“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.”
The Times says that its findings "raise new questions about Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his income tax returns, breaking with decades of practice by past presidents."

According to tax experts, it is unlikely that Mr. Trump would be vulnerable to criminal prosecution for helping his parents evade taxes, because the acts happened too long ago and are past the statute of limitations. There is no time limit, however, on civil fines for tax fraud.
Robert Trump, the president’s brother, issued a statement on behalf of the Trump family and said that all appropriate gift and estate taxes were paid after his parents passed away.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-02/nytimes-accuses-trump-making-hundreds-millions-tax-dodges-and-outright-fraud

[thoughtomator]

Fake news. The IRS audits Trump 24/7 and thus have him covered against any such accusations. NYT is a trash paper with a long history of promoting blatant falsehoods, run by radical Communists with democide on their agenda.

[Zippyjuan]

Fake news. The IRS audits Trump 24/7 and thus have him covered against any such accusations. NYT is a trash paper with a long history of promoting blatant falsehoods, run by radical Communists with democide on their agenda.

The article discusses his father's tax returns- not Donald's. No results of Donald's audits have been released.


The records did not include Donald Trump’s personal tax returns.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2018/10/02/how-trump-is-tryingand-failingto-get-rich-off-his-presidency/


How Trump Is Trying—And Failing—To Get Rich Off His Presidency

When Donald Trump opened Trump Tower in 1983, it marked a seminal moment in American retail, as six stories of glitzy shops like Harry Winston and Cartier beckoned luxury buyers who strode past a live pianist and a 60-foot indoor waterfall. “We got the highest rents ever, anywhere,” says former Trump Organization executive Barbara Res, standing in the pink atrium four decades after she helped build it.

Times have changed. Gazing around, almost all the tenants are now gone. The hollowing-out began years ago, but it has only gotten worse since Trump entered politics. Nike abandoned its attached flagship store earlier this year, and Ivanka Trump’s accessories business closed up shop as well. What’s left is basically nothing but Gucci, Starbucks and The Donald, wall-to-wall. Trump Bar sits atop Trump Grille, next to Trump Café, the Trump Store and Trump’s Ice Cream. It is unlikely Trump pays himself rent for any of them. “Things are all different now,” Res says.

That difference includes profits. Net operating income dropped 27% between 2014, the year before Trump announced his run for president, and 2017, his first year in the White House. When the real estate mogul descended the escalator to launch his campaign, in this very building, no one could have predicted the chain of events that would lead to this point. Even among those who gave his moon-shot presidential bid a chance of success, the assumption was that Trump would dump his assets before taking office.

By refusing to divest, Trump raised an unprecedented question: How would the most divisive presidency in modern American history affect a company built on the president’s persona? Forbes has been working to answer that question since the moment Trump got elected, interviewing nearly 200 colleagues, partners and industry observers. While the experiment continues to unfold, in real time, the early results are in. Much as he’s trying—and he’s definitely trying—Donald Trump is not getting richer off the presidency. Just the opposite. His net worth, by our calculation, has dropped from $4.5 billion in 2015 to $3.1 billion the last two years, knocking the president 138 spots lower on the latest The Forbes 400 (which will be published in full tomorrow).

Three factors are at play. Much of that decline is due to deeper reporting, which revealed, for example, that the president had been lying about the size of his penthouse. Some of it is due to larger market forces. Trump owns commercial space at a time when e-commerce is decimating brick-and-mortar retail, shaving more than $100 million off his fortune—and no amount of bully-pulpit Amazon-bashing will change that.

But the third factor comes from how Trump the president affects Trump the brand. Those familiar with him saw his 2016 run as a surreal marketing strategy, and Trump has said as much, telling Fortune way back in 2000, “It’s very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.” Since his unexpected ascent to the White House, Trump has tried to leverage the trappings of the presidency to benefit his commercial projects, from visits to his golf courses to hosting summits at Mar-a-Lago to launching a new hotel-licensing business aimed at his voters. (The Trump Organization denies the licensing business has to do with politics.)



Long, detailed article at link.

[Swordsmyth]

The article discusses his father's tax returns- not Donald's. No results of Donald's audits have been released.



https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2018/10/02/how-trump-is-tryingand-failingto-get-rich-off-his-presidency/



Long, detailed article at link.

It's still Fake News.

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

No results of Donald's audits have been released.






Released by who? The IRS releases individual audit info?

[oyarde]

I would have to lean towards fake news . Frederick Christ Trump was buried at the Lutheran Cemetery in NYC in Queens in 1999 having been ill for seven years . He was worth maybe 300 million . The IRS would have gone after anything they could steal . Probably one of the largest philanthropist couples in NYC during lifetimes .

[dannno]

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.

Makes me want to throw up.

Didn't he already pay taxes on that $1 billion? Why is there a 55% tax rate to give it to your kid?

I don't know how you can defend this bullshit zip.

[Zippyjuan]

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/york-tax-department-reviewing-reported-tax-allegations-trump/story?id=58243301


New York tax department reviewing reported tax allegations against Trump

The New York State Tax Department is reviewing allegations that Donald Trump received millions of dollars from his father, Fred Trump, possibly including through tax fraud schemes.

The tax department is "vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation," officials told ABC News.

The statute of limitations "makes any criminal prosecution all but impossible," a law enforcement source told ABC News.

Trump, who has long claimed to be a self-made billionaire, along with his siblings, allegedly helped hide millions in gifts from their parents using fake corporations to hide the money, according to a report in the New York Times.

The paper outlined a series of alleged schemes and “outright fraud” deployed by Trump and his family in order to transfer money and evade tens of millions in taxes.

Trump, as noted in the Times story, has repeatedly sold a vision of himself as building a $10 billion empire out of a $1 million loan from his father.

The report from the Times does not shed light on Trump's personal tax returns or current businesses. The president declined repeated requests from the Times to comment on their findings.

Trump's attorney, Charles Harder, vehemently denied the allegations in the Times, calling them "100 percent false and highly defamatory."

The Trump Organization has not responded to a request for comment from ABC News.

State tax authorities have already been investigating Trump’s charity, the Trump Foundation. The probe has expanded to include Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney and fixer who was subpoenaed in August.

New York State Attorney General Barbara Underwood has an open investigation of the Trump Foundation that claims the president and his advisers conflated political and charitable work in violation of charities laws.

[Dr.3D]

I remember somebody else who they couldn't bring down with anything else but tax evasion.

Being desperate as they are, maybe they think what happened to Al Capone could work again?

[Anti Globalist]

The failing New York Times.

[Danke]

zippy never met a tax he does't agree with.

[oyarde]

Makes me want to throw up.

Didn't he already pay taxes on that $1 billion? Why is there a 55% tax rate to give it to your kid?

I don't know how you can defend this bullshit zip.

Yep . Where I am that can all be avoided using gold coins .

[Sonny Tufts]

Didn't he already pay taxes on that $1 billion?

Not necessarily. In fact, it's extremely doubtful that he did, given that the bulk of his wealth consisted of real estate the improvements on which were depreciated during his lifetime. The appreciation in value of his holdings was never subject to income tax, and since they received a stepped-up tax basis at his death, it never will be.

[dannno]

Not necessarily. In fact, it's extremely doubtful that he did, given that the bulk of his wealth consisted of real estate the improvements on which were depreciated during his lifetime. The appreciation in value of his holdings was never subject to income tax, and since they received a stepped-up tax basis at his death, it never will be.

I think you're wrong, all you are considering is income tax.

Compare how much taxes he would have paid had he made $120k working a factory job for 30+ years to how much taxes were paid due to him going into the real estate business. That includes property taxes, corporate business taxes, etc..

[Sonny Tufts]

I think you're wrong, all you are considering is income tax.

Compare how much taxes he would have paid had he made $120k working a factory job for 30+ years to how much taxes were paid due to him going into the real estate business. That includes property taxes, corporate business taxes, etc..

It's doubtful that he bore the burden of property taxes, as most commercial real estate leases are on a triple-net basis where the lessee pays the real property taxes. Moreover, the holdings were likely held in passthrough entities such as limited partnerships, which pay no federal income tax.

The point is that it's wrong to assume that someone dying with a $1 billion estate has already paid taxes on the $1 billion.

[dannno]

It's doubtful that he bore the burden of property taxes, as most commercial real estate leases are on a triple-net basis where the lessee pays the real property taxes. Moreover, the holdings were likely held in passthrough entities such as limited partnerships, which pay no federal income tax.

The point is that it's wrong to assume that someone dying with a $1 billion estate has already paid taxes on the $1 billion.

It's also wrong to assume that renters and leasers aren't ultimately sharing a burden of the property taxes.

I think it is completely insane to believe that with all of the hundreds of taxes we have, that he wasn't paying any taxes after he made a billion dollars. What about sales taxes? What about all of the other taxes?

[Jamesiv1]

This thread displeases the MAGA. Remove it immediately.

[CaptUSA]

Wait a minute - hold the phone...

Are you telling me a rich guy uses loop holes and clever accountants to dodge taxes?! No way. That can't be! :rolleyes:


I fully believe the article and I give kudos to anyone who has the means and methods to dodge taxes or defraud the government. The only "story" here is why they are not doing the same exact "exposes" on their other wealthy friends.

[Sonny Tufts]

I think it is completely insane to believe that with all of the hundreds of taxes we have, that he wasn't paying any taxes after he made a billion dollars. What about sales taxes? What about all of the other taxes?

Of course he paid taxes; that wasn't the point. The issue was whether he paid taxes on the entire $1 billion, which was your original question.

[Sonny Tufts]

Are you telling me a rich guy uses loop holes and clever accountants to dodge taxes?! No way. That can't be! :rolleyes:


I fully believe the article and I give kudos to anyone who has the means and methods to dodge taxes or defraud the government. The only "story" here is why they are not doing the same exact "exposes" on their other wealthy friends.

It's pretty clear that Trump's father used legitimate valuation discount techniques to minimize the estate and gift taxes payable. But the NYT article also says that his father paid above-market prices for repairs and renovations on his properties to a company owned by his children. These payments would constitute indirect taxable gifts to his children, but were apparently never reported as such.

[thoughtomator]

NYT is going to get its ass sued off for this story, and it will not have a prayer in hell of making a credible defense in court.

[CaptUSA]

It's pretty clear that Trump's father used legitimate valuation discount techniques to minimize the estate and gift taxes payable. But the NYT article also says that his father paid above-market prices for repairs and renovations on his properties to a company owned by his children. These payments would constitute indirect taxable gifts to his children, but were apparently never reported as such.

And so what? If I were rich, I'd find all sorts of ways to give my money to my kids and keep it out of the hands of the tax ticks. Good on him, in my opinion.

[Sonny Tufts]

And so what? If I were rich, I'd find all sorts of ways to give my money to my kids and keep it out of the hands of the tax ticks. Good on him, in my opinion.

Tax fraud is never an advisable strategy. Remember Leona Helmsley?

[CaptUSA]

Tax fraud is never an advisable strategy. Remember Leona Helmsley?

Getting caught for tax fraud is never an advisable strategy. And Helmsley was right:

http://quoteparrot.com/images/quote/we-dont-pay-taxes-only-the-little-people-pay-taxes-170664.jpg

[Sonny Tufts]

And Helmsley was right

Well, according to Dannno Fred Trump (a very rich man) paid a boatload of taxes, so Leona was wrong. And playing the tax lottery ("The IRS can't audit everyone, so you might not get caught.") is also not advisable.

[Brian4Liberty]

Great news! This means that they are finally going to go after cronyism, tax evasion and fraud at the highest levels! Watch out Wall St, Clinton Empire, Feinstein and others! Right? Right? Bueller?

[dannno]

Of course he paid taxes; that wasn't the point. The issue was whether he paid taxes on the entire $1 billion, which was your original question.

No, it was that he made a billion dollars and paid a bunch of taxes, now he has to pay more taxes. I don't care what structure the taxes take. No true libertarian does.

[juleswin]

Wait a minute - hold the phone...

Are you telling me a rich guy uses loop holes and clever accountants to dodge taxes?! No way. That can't be! :rolleyes:


I fully believe the article and I give kudos to anyone who has the means and methods to dodge taxes or defraud the government. The only "story" here is why they are not doing the same exact "exposes" on their other wealthy friends.

But Trump is the one promoting increased taxes on the rich while he is there dodging taxes. That I cannot give kudos to. I hope they get him to pay back every single penny of what he dodged.

[Swordsmyth]

But Trump is the one promoting increased taxes on the rich while he is there dodging taxes. That I cannot give kudos to. I hope they get him to pay back every single penny of what he dodged.


I thought Trump was guilty of "Tax Cuts For The Rich"?

Where is he promoting increased taxes on the rich?

[dannno]

Where is he promoting increased taxes on the rich.

Only on Che t-shirts

https://m5.paperblog.com/i/34/342003/best-t-shirt-halloween-costumes-of-2012-L-LpfQP0.jpeg

[Zippyjuan]

I thought Trump was guilty of "Tax Cuts For The Rich"?

Where is he promoting increased taxes on the rich?

Trump will only be saving a paltry estimated $11- $15 million a year on his taxes.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/20/trump-tax-bill-savings-analysis


But analysis by a leading Washington thinktank, the Center for American Progress (CAP), finds that changes to business rules will save Trump roughly $11m to $15m per year, while an amendment to the estate tax – the tax on the transfer of an estate of a deceased person – would potentially save his heirs $4.5m.

[Swordsmyth]

Trump will only be saving a paltry estimated $11- $15 million a year on his taxes.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/20/trump-tax-bill-savings-analysis

OH NO! IMPEACH HIM!:rolleyes: