Sure, Donald Trump reported a $1 billion dollar loss on his federal taxes—twice—to avoid paying decades of income tax. And yes, he cheated New York state out of sales tax on expensive jewelry. And okay, he used his “charitable foundation” as a plain old tax dodge to both take in income without paying taxes and pay his bills without tapping his own accounts.
But just how petty can one man get?
... documents obtained by The Huffington Post show that the candidate has also repeatedly fought to lower the amount he pays in state and local taxes, in some cases telling authorities that his properties are worth tens of millions of dollars less than he’s claimed in his federal election filings.
Donald Trump to the public: These are the greatest assets anywhere!
Donald Trump to the government: These old shacks aren’t worth spit.
He talked the tax board in Las Vegas into knocking the appraisal of his Trump Hotel down to $25 million, then the very next week, listed its value at $50 million in his financial statements. Maybe that’s just Trump in his “smart businessman” role, putting one over on the government. Except Trump’s campaign has been arguing that, even if it’s true that he paid no federal taxes for decades (it’s true), he still pays out gobs of state and local taxes.
… Trump’s aggressive tax tactics are not always consistent with his personal financial disclosures, nor with his campaign’s insistence that the state and local taxes his company pays offset the massive federal income tax deduction he has apparently claimed.
Trump has cheated at every level from the exceptionally large to the unbelievably petty—even prying money out of a local public library.
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Trump’s playing the assessment game is true with every property he owns.
Trump also fought to lower the assessment for his Briarcliff Manor, New York golf course from $13.5 million to just $1.4 million, the Westchester Journal News reported in September 2015. Yet in his 2015 and 2016 personal financial disclosures, Trump maintained that the golf course, which sits on 140 acres and has a 75,000-square-foot clubhouse, was worth more than $50 million.
These huge undervaluations mean that Trump often ends up paying little to nothing in property taxes. For most communities, the amount charged for residential property is grossly insufficient to cover the costs of infrastructure. Towns, counties, and states count on taxes from commercial sources to allow them to maintain streets, deal with emergencies, and generally provide a decent environment for living. Having a Trump facility in town represents a burden that everyone else has to carry.
Those valuation acrobatics [on a North Carolina golf course] saved Trump somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000 in total taxes and $167,000 in county taxes, the Charlotte Observer reported ― money that cuts directly into what the county has to spend on basic services like schools and roads.
In East Fishkill, New York, Trump didn’t just get his property value reduced, he got it retroactively reduced, then went after the city for any “excess” tax he might have pad in the past. Including ...
… Trump managed to wring out refunds from the local governments: $31,367.06 from the Wappingers Central School District, $5,045.38 from Dutchess County, $4,141.25 from the town of East Fishkill, $1,066.06 from the East Fishkill Fire Department, and $306.99 from the public library.
Donald Trump, who claims to be worth $10 billion dollars, sent his lawyers in to manage his own claw back of funds from schools, firefighters, and even the public library. On a property he admitted was worth more than five times the appraised value.
Trump wasn’t kidding when he said he fought against paying taxes. He does’t want to pay his fair share for anything, anywhere. When Donald Trump comes to town, it’s everyone else who pays his bills.