I received a letter from my uni’s CFO—Creative Financial Officer—who earned his degree from Trump University. He said there was good and bad news.
The bad news. . . I’m not going to be paid my normal salary anymore. The good news . . . the university is going to provide me with a car, a Parkland pied de terre, and some petty cash for weekly dining at Marzanos.
I’m only halfway through the New York Times 10,000 word investigative report on Trump’s taxes.
So far, my favorite part is these seemingly innocuous paragraphs:
“To see what a successful business looks like, depreciation or not, look no further than one in Mr. Trump’s portfolio that he does not manage.
After plans for a Trump-branded mini-city on the Far West Side of Manhattan stalled in the 1990s, Mr. Trump’s stake was sold by his partner to Vornado Realty Trust. Mr. Trump objected to the sale in court, saying he had not been consulted, but he ended up with a 30 percent share of two valuable office buildings owned and operated by Vornado.
His share of the profits through the end of 2018 totaled $176.5 million, with depreciation factored in. He has never had to invest more money in the partnership, tax records show.”
One of Trump’s only successful business ventures was successful because he lost ownership of it. But the joke of course is on us because he’s doing to our country exactly what he’s done to the vast majority of his businesses.
When I heard the Businessman President lost $1.17 billion dollars between 1985 and 1994, I suspected it had to be fake news. So much of my trust in him is based upon his business genius. I mean The Art of the Deal and all. If he was lying about his business success what other untruths could I have fallen victim to? Did he really not get any meaningful help from his dad? Did he really not say, “There were good people on both sides” after Charlottesville? Did he really not grab women in the pu#sy?
Thank goodness for Twitter and not having to depend upon the mainstream media. Here’s the perfectly good explanation:
“Real estate developers in the 1980’s & 1990’s, more than 30 years ago, were entitled to massive write offs and depreciation which would, if one was actively building, show losses and tax losses in almost all cases. Much was non monetary. Sometimes considered “tax shelter,” ….you would get it by building, or even buying. You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes….almost all real estate developers did – and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport. Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!”
I am not smart enough to understand sentences one, two, three, and four, but even I get sentence five. Just as I had expected, it’s old, highly inaccurate information propagated by the Fake News.
Satire over. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but if my entire credibility was on the line, I might take a little more time to craft a response. What a bunch of convoluted bullshit. Avoiding taxes was sport, screw any responsibility for the common good. Also, Businessman President, exactly what part of it is “highly inaccurate”? Show us.
I’m entirely down with this idea.
1. The New York Times Bombshell That Bombed.
“And what the NYT can still do to find an audience for its Trump tax story.”
This blows. I was hoping he’d have been fined $400-500m dollars and impeached by now. Maybe some jail time for good measure.
2. Can’t help but wonder if the bombshell bombed because people have been distracted by what Tay is up to. I got you. Taylor Swift Succumbs to Competitive Wokeness. Wokeness a future Olympic event? How might one begin training?
3. We Slow as We Age, but May Not Need to Slow Too Much. Finally, some good news. Footnote. Last Thanksgiving I ran my first marathon in a long time. My time was only 5 minutes slower than my personal record from a decade earlier. Probably my greatest athletic performance ever. A legend in my own mind.
4. Amsterdam’s Plea to Tourists: Visit, But Please Behave Yourself. The problem of “overtourism”. Based upon the pictures, I will pass.
“Sometime it is as simple as tourists not realizing that real people live here.”
Reminds me of signs I see in a nearby neighborhood I cycle through regularly. “Drive like your kids live here.”
Bonus.
Based upon tax case law, estate tax compliance is like speed limit enforcement, 5 miles an hour over the posted limit, troopers look the other way. Similarly, stretch property valuations and annual gift discounts +/- 5 or 10 percent on estate tax returns; no harm, no foul.
How Fred and Donald, and then just Donald, via their estate attorneys, drove 120 miles per hour on streets marked as “40”, year after year, I have no idea. Does the “I” in IRS stand for “Incompetent”?
Something else I have no idea about. How do any honest, hardworking people of modest means, who pay all of their taxes, support this serial short cutter whose actions suggest he doesn’t give a damn about the common good?
From the New York Times investigative report:
“They (father Fred and Donald) were both fluent in the language of half-truths and lies, interviews and records show. They both delighted in transgressing without getting caught. They were both wizards at manipulating the value of their assets, making them appear worth a lot or a little depending on their needs.
Those talents came in handy when Fred Trump Jr. died, on Sept. 26, 1981, at age 42 from complications of alcoholism, leaving a son and a daughter. The executors of his estate were his father and his brother Donald.
Fred Trump Jr.’s largest asset was his stake in seven of the eight buildings his father had transferred to his children. The Trumps would claim that those properties were worth $90.4 million when they finished converting them to cooperatives within a few years of his death. At that value, his stake could have generated an estate tax bill of nearly $10 million.
But the tax return signed by Donald Trump and his father claimed that Fred Trump Jr.’s estate owed just $737,861. This result was achieved by lowballing all seven buildings. Instead of valuing them at $90.4 million, Fred and Donald Trump submitted appraisals putting them at $13.2 million.
Emblematic of their audacity was Park Briar, a 150-unit building in Queens. As it happened, 18 days before Fred Trump Jr.’s death, the Trump siblings had submitted Park Briar’s co-op conversion plan, stating under oath that the building was worth $17.1 million. Yet as Fred Trump Jr.’s executors, Donald Trump and his father when Fred Trump Jr. died.
This fantastical claim — that Park Briar should be taxed as if its value had fallen 83 percent in 18 days — slid past the I.R.S. with barely a protest. An auditor insisted the value should be increased by $100,000, to $3 million.”
Pressing Pause 