Now Ivanka dragged into $28m Trump tax inquiry
IVANKA Trump has been dragged into her father’s tax fraud inquiry as New York i nvestigators interrogate hefty consultancy fees paid to her by the president.
The authorities are looking into $28million that the Trump Organisation wrote off as taxdeductible business expenses, some of which reportedly made its way to the first daughter.
Ms Trump, 39, was paid more than $660,000 to advise on hotel projects in Hawaii and Vancouver, The New York Times reported.
Records of those payments were the subject of a subpoena sent to the Trump firm by the state’s attorney general this week. Investigators are examining whether the money was a legitimate use of business expenses or whether they broke the law. Ms Trump was an executive of the Trump Organisation at the time the consultancy payments were made to a company she owned.
The payments would not be against the law as long as Ms Trump paid income tax on them.
It could, however, raise questions about whether the Trump Organisation’s tax deductions between 2010 and 2018 fell within the rules.
The US taxman – the Internal Revenue Service – has in the past pursued penalties over large consulting fee write-offs it found were made to dodge tax liability. It insists consultants be paid the market rate.
Ms Trump criticised the inquiry as ‘harassment’ and claimed it was politically motivated. She said: ‘This fishing expedition is very clearly part of a continued political vendetta. This “inquiry”... is 100% motivated by politics, publicity and rage. There was no tax benefit whatsoever.’
The reports underscore the legal jeopardy facing Mr Trump when he leaves office in January and loses the immunity of the presidency.
As the inquiries are by state prosecutors, Mr Trump cannot pardon himself or his family as that power applies only to federal crimes. He is facing two inquiries in New York: a criminal one from the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance, and a civil case led by the state attorney general, Letitia James.
They began last March when Mr Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen told Congress the president inflated the value of his financial assets to get bank l oans but devalued them to reduce his taxes.
Mr Trump has paid little or no federal income tax in recent years, his tax records from the past 20 years reveal. In 2016 and 2017, he paid just $770 a year.
‘Part of a continued political vendetta’