There are so many ways to *legally* dodge (avoid) taxes in real estate. Striking that even given all those legal loopholes, the Trump family still managed to repeatedly break tax law, assuming NYT reporting is correct
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) October 3, 2018
Well worth the time it takes to read the whole thing. From the NYTimes, “Trump Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father”:
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.
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…
But if you’re pressed for time, they’ve provided a Shorter: “11 Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Trump’s Wealth”
Think about how dumb in business Trump has to be to get a huge fortune by inheritance, defraud the gov’t of maybe a half billion dollars, and he _still_ ended up indebt to the crime syndicate that runs Russia.
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) October 3, 2018