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"11 Takeaways From The Times’s Investigation Into Trump’s Wealth
(By Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and David Barstow
Oct. 2, 2018)
Donald J. Trump built a business empire and 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. “I built what I built myself,” the president has repeatedly said.
But an investigation by The New York Times has revealed that Donald Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire.
What’s more, much of this money came to Mr. Trump through dubious tax schemes he participated in during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, The Times found.
(Emphasis is mine.)
In all, the president’s parents 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 on gifts and inheritances that was in place at the time. Helped by a variety of tax dodges, the Trumps paid $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax returns show.
The president declined requests over several weeks to comment for this article.
A lawyer for Mr. Trump, Charles J. Harder, provided a written statement. “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.”
In a statement on behalf of the Trump family, the president’s brother, Robert Trump, said, “All appropriate gift and estate tax returns were filed, and the required taxes were paid.”
Since Donald Trump first refused to release his income tax returns, his campaign and then his presidency have been suffused with questions about the extent and sources of his wealth, questions that have only intensified with the Russia investigation. The Times’s new reporting reveals little about his recent business dealings.
But the investigation — based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, and at more than 13,000 words one of the longest investigative articles ever published in The Times — offers the first comprehensive examination of the inherited fortune and tax dodges that guaranteed Mr. Trump a gilded life.
Here are some key takeaways:
The Trumps’ tax maneuvers show a pattern of deception, tax experts say
Donald Trump began reaping wealth from his father’s real estate empire as a toddler
That ‘small loan’ of $1 million was actually at least $60.7 million — much of it never repaid
Fred Trump wove a safety net that rescued his son from one bad bet after another
The Trumps turned an $11 million loan debt into a legally questionable tax write-off
Father and son set out to create the myth of a self-made billionaire
Donald Trump tried to change his ailing father’s will, setting off a family reckoning
The Trumps created a company that siphoned cash from the empire
The Trump parents dodged hundreds of millions in gift taxes by grossly undervaluing the assets they would pass on
After Fred Trump’s death, his empire’s most valuable asset was an I.O.U. from Donald Trump
When Fred Trump died in June 1999 at the age of 93, the vast bulk of his empire was nowhere to be found in his estate — testament to the success of the tax strategies devised by the Trumps in the early 1990s.
The single largest item included in his estate tax return was a $10.3 million I.O.U. from Donald Trump, money his son appears to have borrowed the year before he died.
As for the remnants of empire left in Fred Trump’s estate, the tax return cited appraisals that once again grossly understated their market values.
As their father’s executors, Donald, Maryanne and Robert Trump were legally responsible for the accuracy of his estate tax return. They were obligated not only to give the I.R.S. a complete accounting of the value of his estate’s assets, but also to disclose all the taxable gifts he had made during his lifetime. If they knew anything was wrong and failed to reveal it, tax experts said, they could be in violation of tax law.
Mr. Harder, the president’s lawyer, defended the tax returns filed by the Trumps. “The returns and tax positions that The Times now attacks were examined in real time by the relevant taxing authorities,” he said. “These matters have now been closed for more than a decade.”
Donald Trump got a windfall when the empire was sold. But he may have left money on the table.
In 2003, once again in financial trouble, Donald Trump began engineering the sale of the empire Fred Trump had hoped would never leave the family. The sale, completed in 2004, brought him his biggest payday ever from his father: His cut was $177.3 million, or $236.2 million in today’s dollars. But as it turned out, banks at the time valued the empire at hundreds of millions more than the sale price. Donald Trump, master dealmaker, had sold low. ... "
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