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Trump Committed Tax Fraud & Insurance Fraud & Bank Fraud

my 2 cents after reading the article:

- he's really good at using the tax code to its fullest extent. having a TV show so that you can write off your haircuts is really sharp.
- he pushes right up to the limit. I'd characterize him as "prudently aggressive," in that he isn't likely to go to jail for most of what I read, even though he might end up paying a lot of penalties and interest. For guys like him, that's the whole game.
- I'm not too bothered by him paying Ivanka; she included the income on her return, so someone paid tax on it.
- The abandonment loss is VERY aggressive; I advised a client a few years ago on abandoning stock of a subsidiary and we ran across those rulings. You simply cannot get anything back....even relief from a partnership liability is problematic, and receiving stock of an entity should kill the ordinary loss.

Finally, and more broadly, his long-term strategy seems to be: use leverage and depreciation to create large tax losses wherever possible to offset income from other sources. The NYT is pointing out that a lot of the leverage is coming due soon, but I suspect his plan is to refinance it and keep the leverage in place for his lifetime. He's building up value in his various properties through real estate appreciation, and that doesn't show up anywhere until you sell it. When he passes away, his heirs will get stepped up basis in those properties, which they can then use to pay down debt without a tax bill. By avoiding the income tax during his lifetime, he allows his heirs to avoid it through the basis stepup at death. It's not at all dumb, and it seems to be working.

tax accounting for real estate is so bogus
 
Agreed. Show me a rental property, and I'll almost always show you losses building up even while the property appreciates.....and then when you sell it, you just roll it over into the next property and keep the loss train rolling. Most of us with rental property losses have them suspended as passive losses - but by being active in his real estate businesses, he is able to deduct them as he goes against active income.
 
Agreed. Show me a rental property, and I'll almost always show you losses building up even while the property appreciates.....and then when you sell it, you just roll it over into the next property and keep the loss train rolling. Most of us with rental property losses have them suspended as passive losses - but by being active in his real estate businesses, he is able to deduct them as he goes against active income.

they did seem to account for the fact he was still losing money before depreciation. also on projects like Doral, he had sunk in hundreds of millions. I was arguing this back and forth with my buddy who is also an accountant last night. It's hard to know without knowing the amount of unguaranteed debt on the properties where he stands. Because $400 million of debt doesn't seem like alot given all his assets.

It also seems like he just doesn't have the ego to sell losing properties, so he'll risk everything to avoid the appearance of having a deal go bad. But even the shittiest of golf courses like Doral he bought for $150 million and sunk another $250 million in he should be able to sell for like close to $200 million for the land value alone, so it's hard to imagine him actually being under water.
 
He’s sold a few properties to Russians in the past.
 
It's the disconnect of the tax treatment of real estate as a depreciating asset while the eonomic reality is that it is an appreciating asset.
 
Democrats need to get out of discussion on the legality of Trumps tax evasion and into discussion about how his entire persona is a fraud.
 
It's the disconnect of the tax treatment of real estate as a depreciating asset while the eonomic reality is that it is an appreciating asset.

Seems like a problem.

Democrats need to get out of discussion on the legality of Trumps tax evasion and into discussion about how his entire persona is a fraud.

I would hope Democrats can have a fruitful discussion about Trump and reforming tax law.
 
I would hope Democrats can have a fruitful discussion about Trump and reforming tax law.

Sure, Tax reform is a great goal, but it is also boring and complicated election ad and debate fodder. Dems trotting out discussion about depreciation and business write-offs and clever debt structuring won't work because people won't pay attention. The legality of what he did doesn't matter at this point, it's the appearance of what he did that does. His entire political success is based on this tough, uber-rich guy persona and the Dems should just hammer away that this guy is not tough, he's a cheating weasel, and he's not uber-rich he just really good at lying. For the next 35 days the message should be: "Trump is a fraud who's been gaming the system with smoke and mirrors for decades, at your expense. We need tax reform but the first step is dumping the fraudster in Chief."
 
Democrats need to get out of discussion on the legality of Trumps tax evasion and into discussion about how his entire persona is a fraud.

I think they should focus on the whole system that's broken. We have a tax code that lets the rich hire lawyers to find creative ways to avoid paying taxes, and Trump's 2017 tax bill was a gift to himself and his donors.

It also lines up with what I've seen in Biden ads.
 
Sure, Tax reform is a great goal, but it is also boring and complicated election ad and debate fodder. Dems trotting out discussion about depreciation and business write-offs and clever debt structuring won't work because people won't pay attention.

on the flip side, the general population also doesn't really understand the tax game around real estate and see that this self-claimed billionaire is paying $750 a year when they're paying $10,000 on $55k annually as proof that the system is rigged in favor of the rich
 
I think they should focus on the whole system that's broken. We have a tax code that lets the rich hire lawyers to find creative ways to avoid paying taxes, and Trump's 2017 tax bill was a gift to himself and his donors.

It also lines up with what I've seen in Biden ads.

That's all great stuff, especially the tax bill stuff, but they need to be really careful on the talk show circuit not to get bogged down into details this close to the election. Tax law is boring and super confusing; voters will tune out. Pubs will talk their way out of it and accuse Dems of doing the exact same thing as Trump to bo-sides the issue and create confusion. "Bernie Sanders owns a mansion blah blah blah...". Pubs have the perceived upper hand on tax reform, even though the data and history completely refute this notion, and Dems will lose the argument once they starting talking about depreciation loops-holes and the technical illegality of paying Ivanka as a consultant.
 
on the flip side, the general population also doesn't really understand the tax game around real estate and see that this self-claimed billionaire is paying $750 a year when they're paying $10,000 on $55k annually as proof that the system is rigged in favor of the rich

this is a great point. Anyone who doesn't have the wherewithal to load up on appreciating depreciable assets is automatically disadvantaged. Even worse if you're getting a W-2.
 
But so what ? What's Trump Tower worth ? A billion dollars ?

Read the whole thread in there and it's interesting. Shows a NOI of 13 million, so it'd be worth around $250mil. But this is all at pre-covid prices. Post covid prices are just crashing. Basically estimated his Assets were worth around $2.5 billion and he had about $1 Billion of debt on it.
 
on the flip side, the general population also doesn't really understand the tax game around real estate and see that this self-claimed billionaire is paying $750 a year when they're paying $10,000 on $55k annually as proof that the system is rigged in favor of the rich

That's the right angle. All i'm saying is to avoid the details of real estate taxes and hammer home the over aching theme. The tweet showing the average tax bill for various professions compared to Trump's is great. But the Pubs are going to quickly find a way to accuse the Dems of rigging the system and Trump is the just playing the game better. This will be Bill Clinton's fault before you know it. "How can we trust the Democrats to fix an unfair tax program that they created. We (republicans) want to cut taxes and even the playing field so that everyone only pays $750 per year!"

I just don't think tax policy is a winning strategy for Dems in 2020, but shitting on Trump and undermining his entire 'tough, successful, business man' facade is a better way to go.
 
That's the right angle. All i'm saying is to avoid the details of real estate taxes and hammer home the over aching theme. The tweet showing the average tax bill for various professions compared to Trump's is great. But the Pubs are going to quickly find a way to accuse the Dems of rigging the system and Trump is the just playing the game better. This will be Bill Clinton's fault before you know it. "How can we trust the Democrats to fix an unfair tax program that they created. We (republicans) want to cut taxes and even the playing field so that everyone only pays $750 per year!"

I just don't think tax policy is a winning strategy for Dems in 2020, but shitting on Trump and undermining his entire 'tough, successful, business man' facade is a better way to go.


I've seen it said many times in the last 24 hours "he was just using the tax code created by Obama".
 
We can talk about tax reform and how fucked and rigged the entire system is on January 21st.

Until then, or until Trump concedes the Dems need to hammer home:
- how much of a con man and a liar he is - DEBT DEBT DEBT
- how you making $35K/year pay more in taxes than him
- $70K haircut

The average American has crippling ADD and likes to reads at a 6th grade level. Don't overcomplicate it.
 
That and he’s a bad businessman whose businesses LOSE money. Like diggler and others have said, this is what you’re supposed to do with real estate but the general public doesn’t care or understand tax stuff. The numbers are terrible optics so just hammer him on that and let his fuzzy brain try to justify real estate taxation to Joe Sixpack.
 
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