https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html

The title understates the case, and I think it’s going to be explosive. Here’s the subhead:

The president has long sold himself as a self-made billionaire, but a Times investigation found that he received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, much of it through tax dodges in the 1990s.

I’m not finished, because it’s a long read full of documentary details. This is the Grey Lady at her finest, and I’m happy that coincidentally I subscribed yesterday to the Times. Didn’t expect to get my money’s worth so immediately.

The article puts to rest once and for all Trump’s grandiose myth about being a self-made “billionaire”. Fred and Donald, in the Times’ telling, actively worked to create that myth, with Fred going along with the joke when Donald would diminish his father’s accomplishments to fluff his own. And it was Daddy who bailed Donny out, time after time, from his foolish investments.

To build up the Trump family fortune, the Times described a really dodgy network of shell companies which ultimately funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to the children bypassing the 55% estate tax at the time. The Times estimates that the Trump family shenanigans cheated the IRS out of hundreds of millions of dollars. They’d play the classic game of valuing property low when reporting sales to the IRS, and sometimes ten times as high when listing the same property as collateral or for sale.

Another big time dodge was a company called All County Building Supply and Maintenance. It paid suppliers and contractors for supplies and furnishings for the Trump properties, then turned around and invoiced Fred Trump for reimbursement with a 20% markup…which went straight into the pockets of the kids. There’s an image of one of the invoices, and prominently in all caps is the warning “DO NOT LIST PRICES ON ANY PACKING OR PROOF OF DELIVERY RECEIPTS”. Yeah, avoid a paper trail at all costs.

The brazenness of it took my breath away. Fred and Donnie shared the attitude that laws and regulations were for suckers, and the name of the game was evade, evade, evade. And when caught, lie, lie, lie.

And that’s where the Donald Trump we know and despise came from. The acorn did not fall far from the tree.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/02/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-schemes-fred-trump.html