‘Dad gave president $413m’
The New York Times has reported that President Donald Trump received at least $413 million from his father over the decades, much of that through dubious tax dodges, including fraud.
The 15,000-word Times report contradicts Trump’s portrayal of himself as a self-made billionaire who started with just a $1m loan from his father.
The Times says Trump and his father, Fred, avoided gift and inheritance taxes by setting up a sham corporation and undervaluing assets to tax authorities. It says its report is based on more than 100,000 pages of documents, including confidential tax returns from the father and his companies.
A lawyer for Trump, Charles J Harder, told the Times there was no ‘‘fraud or tax evasion’’ and the facts cited in the report were ‘‘extremely inaccurate’’.
The White House dismissed the report as a ‘‘misleading attack against the Trump family by the failing New York Times’’.
The New York state tax department told the Associated Press that it was reviewing the allegations in the Times
and ‘‘is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation’’. The department typically refers findings to the state attorney general’s office.
The Times says the Trump family hid millions of dollars of transfers from the father to his children through a sham company owned by the children, called All County Building Supply & Maintenance. Set up in 1992 ostensibly as a purchasing agent to supply Fred Trump’s buildings with boilers, cleaning supplies and other goods, the father would pad invoices with markups of 20 per cent or even 50 per cent, thereby avoiding gift taxes, the newspaper reports.
The Times says that before Fred Trump died in the late 1990s, he transferred ownership of most of his real estate empire to his four children. The value of the properties in tax returns added up to $41.4m, vastly less than the Times says they were worth.
The same properties would be sold off over the next decade for more than 16 times that amount.
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 $550m, based on a 55 per cent tax on gifts and inheritance at the time.
Instead, the children paid $52.2m, or about 5 per cent.
Tax experts cited in the report say that Trump is unlikely to face criminal prosecution in helping his parents evade taxes because the manoeuvres occurred long ago and are past the statute of limitation.
The president’s brother, Robert Trump, said ‘‘all appropriate gift and estate tax returns’’ were filed. ‘‘Our family has no other comment on these matters that happened some 20 years ago,’’ he told the Times, ‘‘and would appreciate your respecting the privacy of our deceased parents, may God rest their souls’’.
The Times report says documents it reviewed show the future president was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars at the age of 3. By the time Trump had graduated from college, the report says, he was getting the equivalent of $1m a year from his father.
When he was campaigning, Trump repeatedly boasted of his ability to turn a small loan from his father into his fortune.
‘‘My father gave me a very small loan in 1975,’’ he said, ‘‘and I built it into a company that’s worth many, many billions of dollars.’’ –AP