Quote:
Originally Posted by Jacuzzme
“Trump has good accountants and doesn’t cheat on his taxes.” is the appropriate headline for this article.
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I'm not sure about either of those.
The article says the Trump Corporation deducted the $2.3 million cost of criminal defense lawyers for Donald Trump Jr related to his meeting with Russians. (Aside: This is fucking ridiculous, the American justice system out of control. There are a lot of innocent people sitting in jail because the convicted knew they'd be bankrupted if they went to trial. The Trumps had the money to fight this.)
Also Trump or his company deducted 2.2 million in property taxes for a family residence that was probably incorrectly classed as an investment property. (It's not a deductible expense if it's a family residence.) He appears to have inflated the values of two properties to generate 119.3 million in tax deductions for conservation easements. He deducted payments to his hair stylist and Ivanka's hair stylist, to a photographer who was taking photos at a New Years Eve party, for table linens, for fuel for his plane when potentially used on personal trips, and other similar items.
Also he paid millions in consulting fees, and a good chunk of that went to family members. The consulting payments to his kids may have been a way to evade estate taxes. There's a question as to whether some of these consulting fees, in places like Azerbaijan and Turkey, may have been bribes. The NYT really was just speculating about estate tax evasion and bribes -- they didn't have any evidence.
In 2009, he gave up partnership interests in the Atlantic City casinos, claiming them to be valueless, even though he was issued 5% of the stock in a new company which took over ownership of partnerships in the casinos. Abandoning the partnership interest freed up $700 million in business losses for Trump. Trump used part of these losses to offset prior years' income, and filed for a $72.9 million tax refund, which he received.
The problem, he should have given up ALL ownership in the abandoned property (the property owned by the partnerships) to be able to use the business losses. He didn't do that because he got the stock. He's being audited on this, and the IRS wants the $72.9 million back plus interest.
I suspect the $700 million in losses didn't actually come out of Trump's pocket, but rather out the pockets of the bondholders and banks that were backing the casinos. That's what happened in the early 1990's, when Trump generated another $900 million in losses that he legally was able to use to offset taxes in future years. The difference was that he complied with tax laws then, but he probably didn't in 2009 because he retained the 5% interest in the company that ended up with the casinos.
