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

[Squire Robertsson]

How is Fred Trump's maneuvering around and through the briar patch of US and NY tax laws any different than what John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford did? Or any other person with wealth to be passed on to his heirs?

 

[SovereignGrace]

How is Fred Trump's maneuvering around and through the briar patch of US and NY tax laws any different than what John D. Rockefeller and Henry Ford did? Or any other person with wealth to be passed on to his heirs?

They weren’t in power and witch hunted like Trump.

 

[Aaron]

--
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.”

...

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.

--

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.

 

[Baptist Believer]

First of all, if it was illegal, (I don't think the allegation is that it was illegal) the toddler (Don* Tr*mp) can not be held accountable.

Not as a toddler. When he became and adult and was hands on with a number of the schemes, then he became accountable.

Secondly, $200,000 a year for 50 years is only $10 million, not $413 million.

Who said the amount remained $200,000/year or that it was the only way money was transferred? You don't even have the command of the most basic allegations of the story and you are trying to dismiss it. It is obvious you haven't even skimmed over the story.

It was a deceitful way to say that Mr. Tr*mp's claim that he is a self-made billionaire is false.

You have no way of knowing whether or not it was deceitful because you haven't even bothered to read the story, yet you have drawn your conclusions and condemned it anyway. Sad.

 

[Baptist Believer]

I don't care.

I didn't expect you to care, but that's your issue, not mine.

 

[Baptist Believer]

Read between the lines:

My question is, "have you actually read the lines?"

Mueller shedding more attorneys in Russia investigation

Mueller's winding down.

To some degree. We can't be sure if that means the report is nearly ready or if he has completed one aspect of the investigation. If you actually read the article you cited, this sentence should have helped you understand what it means:

"Van Grack and Freeny were on the teams prosecuting Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort."​

Since Manafort has already been found guilty of eight felonies and is not cooperating with the investigation, there probably isn't any more reason to investigated him.

 

[Baptist Believer]

Undoubtedly Mueller's looking for a graceful way to back out of this witch hunt while saving his precious reputation.

Even if nothing else comes out of the investigation (highly unlikely), Mueller has a number of guilty pleas, one who has been found guilty in a court of law, a couple of people who have already gone to prison, and a number of indictments issued. So there's no sane way to call that a "witch hunt" and no need to "back out." His reputation is secure among most Americans.

 

[Baptist Believer]

Estate taxes are horrible, I don't know how people can justify them.

Gifts from a parent to a son or daughter shouldn't be taxed, either. What business is it of the government's if I want to help out my kids?

I don't like estate taxes either, but that's not the point. Estate taxes were the law at the time the Trump family allegedly used illegal means to circumvent them.

 

[Baptist Believer]

I heard a tax lawyer on the radio today and she said that all the Trump family did was to work within the complicated structure of the tax laws. Surely the vaulted and very powerful Federal IRS would have gotten on to the Trump family way back then if they were indeed violating the tax laws. They (IRS) didn't, so we must assume the Trump family were adhering to all Federal income related laws.

Everything you hear on the radio must be true, just like everything you see on television.

 

[canadyjd]

Not as a toddler. When he became and adult and was hands on with a number of the schemes, then he became accountable.


Who said the amount remained $200,000/year or that it was the only way money was transferred? You don't even have the command of the most basic allegations of the story and you are trying to dismiss it. It is obvious you haven't even skimmed over the story.


You have no way of knowing whether or not it was deceitful because you haven't even bothered to read the story, yet you have drawn your conclusions and condemned it anyway. Sad.

I responded to quotes from the story, which was enough to see the deceitful nature of the reporting.

 

[Baptist Believer]

I responded to quotes from the story, which was enough to see the deceitful nature of the reporting.

You responded to just a small portion of the introductory material that I quoted from a 14,000+ word story with extensive detail.

Since you misinterpreted the small part that was quoted, you can be sure you have made a faulty judgment.

 

[kyredneck]

My question is, "have you actually read the lines?"

Yep, and still am (I seriously doubt that you bother to look in this direction, you're so fixated with impugning Trump). Read these lines, something's happening this morning:

SOMETHING’S GOING DOWN=> DOJ National Security Division Announces Thursday Morning Press Conference

"...And now this… The Department of Justice led by Rod Rosenstein will hold a press conference on Thursday morning at 9:30 AM Eastern...."

That's 15 minutes from now.

 

[canadyjd]

You responded to just a small portion of the introductory material that I quoted from a 14,000+ word story with extensive detail.

Since you misinterpreted the small part that was quoted, you can be sure you have made a faulty judgment.

The nyt is obviously biased. I misinterpreted nothing. No need to waste time on biased reporting.

Thanks for the conversation. Peace to you.

 

[Reynolds]

I didn't expect you to care, but that's your issue, not mine.

Seemed to be enough your issue that you felt compelled to comment.

 

[Baptist Believer]

Yep, and still am (I seriously doubt that you bother to look in this direction, you're so fixated with impugning Trump). Read these lines, something's happening this morning:

SOMETHING’S GOING DOWN=> DOJ National Security Division Announces Thursday Morning Press Conference

"...And now this… The Department of Justice led by Rod Rosenstein will hold a press conference on Thursday morning at 9:30 AM Eastern...."

That's 15 minutes from now.

And it is not directly related to Mueller's investigation.

 

[church mouse guy]

The nyt is obviously biased. I misinterpreted nothing. No need to waste time on biased reporting.

Thanks for the conversation. Peace to you.

That is the problem with the NYT--it is the voice of the Democrat Party and is partly owned by Carlos Slim, worth perhaps seventy billion dollars. If Slim keeps these smears up, Trump should order the IRS to examine for tax evasion every transactions of the Mexican Carlos Slim to prove that Slim is not engaging in monopolistic practices or tax evasion schemes to support his extravagant lifestyle in the South of France. I myself have never heard of Slim giving anybody anything but I don't know. I know Slim cheated the Mexican people of the government telephone system for which he paid a fraction of what it was worth when he got the insider deal from Mexican President Carlos Slim.

 

[Revmitchell]

Even if nothing else comes out of the investigation (highly unlikely), Mueller has a number of guilty pleas, one who has been found guilty in a court of law, a couple of people who have already gone to prison, and a number of indictments issued. So there's no sane way to call that a "witch hunt" and no need to "back out." His reputation is secure among most Americans.

Ues there is. None of those charges have anything to do with russia. A witch hunt it is.

 

[Baptist Believer]

Ues there is. None of those charges have anything to do with russia. A witch hunt it is.

You obviously haven't been keeping up since there were indictments against Russian hackers. Moreover, there are connections to Russia in Paul Manafort's consulting business and the arrest of Maria Butina, who was involved with the NRA and certain Republicans. Since there is a gag order on the case, we don't know much more than that.

 

[HankD]

we don't know much more than that.

Because there is no more.

 

[Baptist Believer]

Because there is no more.

So you are involved in the investigation and know information that is being kept secret under the gag order? Unless that is true, then you cannot know and you have no basis to make your claim.