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

[777]

Yeah, either Rosie has flipped or Trump is just waiting until after the midterms to get rid of him and maybe Jeff Flake. He's not going to make that yuge of a glaring mistake.

 

[Squire Robertsson]

The 10/6 WSJ has an op-ed essay on this topic. I will write up the highlights later. As the article is behind a paywall by now.

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

Yeah, either Rosie has flipped or Trump is just waiting until after the midterms to get rid of him and maybe Jeff Flake. He's not going to make that yuge of a glaring mistake.

How does a president get rid of a senior? Assignation?

 

[kyredneck]

Yeah, either Rosie has flipped or Trump is just waiting until after the midterms to get rid of him

Lol, the plot thickens:

Comey Confidant James Baker Throws Rosenstein Under the Bus – Tells Congress His Plot to Oust Trump Was NOT A JOKE

"...Baker told Congress last week that his boss — then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe — was dead serious about the idea of surreptitiously recording the 45th president and using the evidence to make the case that Trump should be removed from office, according to my sources.

Baker told lawmakers he wasn’t in the meeting that McCabe had with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in which the subject came up. But he did have firsthand conversations with McCabe and the FBI lawyer assigned to McCabe, Lisa Page, about the issue.

“As far as Baker was concerned, this was a real plan being discussed,” said a source directly familiar with the congressional investigation. “It was no laughing matter for the FBI.”

Word of Baker’s testimony surfaces just days before Rosenstein is set to be interviewed in private on Thursday by House Judiciary Committee lawmakers.

“You walk away from the Baker interview with little doubt that the FBI leadership in that 2016-17 time-frame saw itself as far more than a neutral investigative agency but actually as a force to stop Trump’s election before it happened and then maybe reversing it after the election was over,” said a source directly familiar with the congressional investigation...."

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

Lol, the plot thickens:

Comey Confidant James Baker Throws Rosenstein Under the Bus – Tells Congress His Plot to Oust Trump Was NOT A JOKE

"...Baker told Congress last week that his boss — then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe — was dead serious about the idea of surreptitiously recording the 45th president and using the evidence to make the case that Trump should be removed from office, according to my sources.

Baker told lawmakers he wasn’t in the meeting that McCabe had with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in which the subject came up. But he did have firsthand conversations with McCabe and the FBI lawyer assigned to McCabe, Lisa Page, about the issue.

“As far as Baker was concerned, this was a real plan being discussed,” said a source directly familiar with the congressional investigation. “It was no laughing matter for the FBI.”

Word of Baker’s testimony surfaces just days before Rosenstein is set to be interviewed in private on Thursday by House Judiciary Committee lawmakers.

“You walk away from the Baker interview with little doubt that the FBI leadership in that 2016-17 time-frame saw itself as far more than a neutral investigative agency but actually as a force to stop Trump’s election before it happened and then maybe reversing it after the election was over,” said a source directly familiar with the congressional investigation...."

Possibly, but Baker’s testimony here regarding Rosenstein amounts to hearsay, maybe smear. They’ll need more than that.

 

[kyredneck]

Possibly, but Baker’s testimony here regarding Rosenstein amounts to hearsay, maybe smear. They’ll need more than that.

Right.

They're beginning to turn on each other.

And I've no doubt Trump will use it to his advantage.

 

[MsGuidedAngel]

The New York Times are all Extreme Left-wing Liberal's!!

I like the New York Post better as they are conservative!!

I get most of my news from OAN News Network on YouTube!!

I do not worry, as Our ONE True GOD the HEAVENLY FATHER who art in Heaven Above CONTROL'S the WEATHER ( UNIVERSE ) and the EARTH from HEAVEN ABOVE with HIS SON Christ-MESSIAH Jesus-Yeshua for Today and Everyday Forevermore Everyone!!

Love Always and Shalom ( Peace ), YSIC \o/

Kristi Ann

 

[kyredneck]

The New York Times are all Extreme Left-wing Liberal's!!

AGREE!

I like the New York Post better as they are conservative!!

AGREE!

I get most of my news from OAN News Network on YouTube!!

I stumbled upon One America News (OAN) network 3-4 months ago and basically keep it on the TV thru the day when I'm working around the place. It's real news! Pure and simple. Per Rand Paul [0:39 - 1:15]:

 

[Squire Robertsson]

The 10/6 WSJ has an op-ed essay on this topic. I will write up the highlights later. As the article is behind a paywall by now.

Here are some highlights of the essay. For the full piece, I suggest your local public library if you don't have access to a subscription.

• The headline:
  • Dogs Bite Men and Trumps Duck Taxes
    Nobody hands over 55% of his life’s work to the IRS. The real revelation is dad’s role in the Trump myth
• SNIP the most interesting revelation is one the Times buries—the astonishing degree to which father Fred Trump patiently financed and strategically connived in the creation of what the paper calls the “Donald Trump myth.” Think Joseph P. Kennedy.
• SNIP Mr. Trump and his sire are nothing new under the sun. Nobody in their right mind from the compulsive accumulator class pays the punitive federal estate tax. From an early age, such people make sure their lifetime achievements are not sucked up and splattered away in 15 seconds of federal spending.
• SNIP Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, all apparently in the pink of health, have been working for years to shield their assets from the taxman.
• Because politicians find it useful to appease both the envious and the wealthy, the IRS code features both an estate tax and ways to avoid it.
  • A loophole the Times accuses the Trumps of using is a so-called grantor-retained annuity trust, described as “one of the tax code’s great gifts to the ultrawealthy.”
  • Unsurprisingly, it also happens to be a favorite of the Sulzberger family, which owns the New York Times.
• Show me a wealthy entrepreneur whose family paid the death tax of 55% (now 40%) and I will show you an entrepreneur who died unexpectedly.
• The Times now finds illegal many Trump Senior dodges that in the 1990s passed IRS muster or escaped IRS notice and have been effectively rendered legal (at least for criminal purposes) by the statute of limitations.
• This is not the place to debate the merits of an estate tax. Wikipedia has a rundown of ingenious pro-tax arguments by recognized academic experts such as the University of Michigan’s Joel Slemrod.

Please note the WSJ's embedded links.

 

[Revmitchell]

--
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.

This hit piiece, and that is what this is, is big on claims but short on any real evidence. It makes suggestions of illegal and or improper tax evasion based on what? No one is going to just give their hard earned money away to the IRS without working to keep as much of your own hard earned money yourself. This article is not a good read it is nothing more than a cheap shots and innuendo.

The Trumps found a way to avoid paying taxes. Good for them.

 

[Squire Robertsson]

Mitch, did you read through the highlights I posted?

 

[Revmitchell]

Mitch, did you read through the highlights I posted?

I have now, did you notice the ridiculous characterizations of what the Trumps did as well as the statements full of innuendo?

 

[Squire Robertsson]

By the Times or the WSJ?

I have now, did you notice the ridiculous characterizations of what the Trumps did as well as the statements full of innuendo?

 

[Revmitchell]

By the Times or the WSJ?

The Times

 

[Squire Robertsson]

I don't bother reading the Times. I get my national and international news from other sources. And I have little to no interest in the local news of NYC and the East Coast. I subscribe to the WSJ. So, I read the op-ed piece just in the course of life. I didn't go looking for it.

The Times

 

[Baptist Believer]

• The headline:
  • Dogs Bite Men and Trumps Duck Taxes
    Nobody hands over 55% of his life’s work to the IRS. The real revelation is dad’s role in the Trump myth
• SNIP the most interesting revelation is one the Times buries—the astonishing degree to which father Fred Trump patiently financed and strategically connived in the creation of what the paper calls the “Donald Trump myth.” Think Joseph P. Kennedy.
• The Times now finds illegal many Trump Senior dodges that in the 1990s passed IRS muster or escaped IRS notice and have been effectively rendered legal (at least for criminal purposes) by the statute of limitations

So, essentially, the Wall Street Journal confirms the main thrust of the NY Times story:

(1) Fred Trump, Sr., helped create the myth of the self-made financial genius Donald Trump.
(2) Donald Trump has used that myth as his prime credential for the Presidency.
(3) The statute of limitations has passed for criminal charges, but the IRS and the State of New York could pursue civil penalties.

 

[Squire Robertsson]

You seem to have missed the main thrust of the WSJ article. The Trumps have done nothing that other is their same situation haven't done. If the tax people go after the Trumps, then they need to go after a boatload of other people who have structured their finances in the same ways.

So, essentially, the Wall Street Journal confirms the main thrust of the NY Times story:

(1) Fred Trump, Sr., helped create the myth of the self-made financial genius Donald Trump.
(2) Donald Trump has used that myth as his prime credential for the Presidency.
(3) The statute of limitations has passed for criminal charges, but the IRS and the State of New York could pursue civil penalties.

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

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

cranial trephining ...

 

[Earth Wind and Fire]

Here's a section that jumped out to me:

The line between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion is often murky, and it is constantly being stretched by inventive tax lawyers. There is no shortage of clever tax avoidance tricks that have been blessed by either the courts or the I.R.S. itself. The richest Americans almost never pay anything close to full freight.

Gee, that's not biased, no sirree. That's good factual journalism, that there.

Tell that to Al Capone

 

[Squire Robertsson]

The Feds got Capone well within the statute of limitations. Also, Capone didn't use the legal loopholes available the Trumps and other of their class.

Tell that to Al Capone