N.Y. WILL REVIEW TRUMP TAXES.
NEW YORK • New York City will seek any taxes that President Donald Trump should have paid for money he received from his late father, Mayor Bill de Blasio said, following a New York Times report on the transactions.
“It’s clear to me that there are real ramifications right now to what has been disclosed, either potential violations of law, or in cases where the statute of limitations has ended that there may be very serious civil penalties that can be applied by both the state and the city,” de Blasio said Wednesday. “The city of New York is looking to recoup any money that Donald Trump owes the people of New York City, period.”
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Trump received vastly more from his father than he has previously stated and that his father backstopped his son’s businesses during times of financial distress. The newspaper reported that the family used a variety of schemes — including setting up a sham corporation and undervaluing assets to tax authorities — to minimize its taxes.
The newspaper said its findings discredited Trump’s claims that he’s a self-made billionaire who had received only a $1-million loan from his father. The newspaper said it had reviewed 100,000 documents, including the elder Trump’s tax returns, to calculate that Trump had received the equivalent in today’s dollars of $413 million.
In total, the president’s father and mother transferred over $1 billion to their children, according to the Times tally. That should have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million, based on a 55 per cent tax on gifts and inheritance at the time. Instead, they paid $52.2 million, or about five per cent.
The state Finance Department said Tuesday that it would open an investigation into the allegations. The department had previously begun investigating the president’s charity, the Trump Foundation.
De Blasio said the city and state would work together on the new probe. Under New York and federal law, there’s no statute of limitations to pursue civil tax cases if authorities suspect an intent to evade taxes. Generally, the activities described by the paper would be too old to lead to a criminal inquiry.
Charles J. Harder, a lawyer for Trump, called the newspaper’s reporting “100 per cent false. There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which the Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate.”