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WashingtonPost.com:
The Trump case may be unusual. But if true, it’s brazen tax fraud.
Opinion by Ruth Marcus
“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” So said the late real estate tycoon Leona Helmsley, according to her housekeeper. To be more precise: according to her housekeeper’s testimony at Helmsley’s trial on tax fraud charges. Charges brought by one Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the U.S. attorney for Manhattan. Charges on which she was convicted — and served 18 months.
So let’s hear nothing, not a word, about the supposed unfairness of the indictment a New York state grand jury handed up on Thursday of the Trump Organization and its former chief financial officer on tax fraud charges, the details of which sound positively Helmsley-esque.
The “Queen of Mean” evaded $1.2 million in taxes by charging personal expenses, including renovations of her Connecticut estate, to the Helmsley hotel chain.
“You were not driven to this crime by financial need,” the judge lectured Helmsley at her sentencing. “Rather, your conduct was the product of naked greed. Throughout its course, you persisted in the arrogant belief that you were above the law.”
Sounds familiar. Previous reporting about the Trump family’s tax returns portrays a multigenerational family enterprise devoted to tax avoidance, if not outright evasion. Thursday’s 15-count indictment lays out a separate, sprawling, 15-year conspiracy to funnel millions in unreported compensation — in the form of rent-free Manhattan apartments, leased Mercedes, private-school tuition payments, and the like — to senior Trump Organization executives, including CFO Allen Weisselberg, who allegedly received $1.76 million on which he paid no taxes. Both Weisselberg and lawyers for the Trump Organization pleaded not guilty.
“To put it bluntly, this was a sweeping and audacious illegal payments scheme,” Carey Dunne, general counsel for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, said at the arraignment “Contrary to today’s assertion by the company’s former CEO, this is not a ‘standard practice in the business community,’ nor was it the act of a rogue or isolated employee.”
Granted, it’s unusual to bring a criminal tax case involving the failure to pay taxes on fringe benefits. To take one relevant example, the Internal Revenue Service dunned Ronald and Nancy Reagan for back taxes plus interest for failing to report the value of $3 million free clothes, jewelry, furs and designer dresses she received; that was a civil penalty, not a criminal prosecution.
But it’s also unusual for prosecutors to amass the kind of damning evidence of intent laid out in the indictment. Nancy Reagan probably didn’t give a second thought to the tax consequences of her designer freebies; the Trump Organization and Weisselberg appear to have thought about nothing but tax consequences. Normal businesses don’t keep two sets of books, one for the tax authorities and the other for internal use. No self-respecting prosecutor would look at this kind of evidence and take a pass.
Two things stand out in the indictment: the seemingly boundless intensity of Weisselberg’s greed and, more legally significant, the degree to which the Trump Organization was aware of, and benefited from, the tax scheme.
*Click on the link above, if you are interested in reading the article further.*
...
A/B
The Trump case may be unusual. But if true, it’s brazen tax fraud.
Opinion by Ruth Marcus
“We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” So said the late real estate tycoon Leona Helmsley, according to her housekeeper. To be more precise: according to her housekeeper’s testimony at Helmsley’s trial on tax fraud charges. Charges brought by one Rudolph W. Giuliani, then the U.S. attorney for Manhattan. Charges on which she was convicted — and served 18 months.
So let’s hear nothing, not a word, about the supposed unfairness of the indictment a New York state grand jury handed up on Thursday of the Trump Organization and its former chief financial officer on tax fraud charges, the details of which sound positively Helmsley-esque.
The “Queen of Mean” evaded $1.2 million in taxes by charging personal expenses, including renovations of her Connecticut estate, to the Helmsley hotel chain.
“You were not driven to this crime by financial need,” the judge lectured Helmsley at her sentencing. “Rather, your conduct was the product of naked greed. Throughout its course, you persisted in the arrogant belief that you were above the law.”
Sounds familiar. Previous reporting about the Trump family’s tax returns portrays a multigenerational family enterprise devoted to tax avoidance, if not outright evasion. Thursday’s 15-count indictment lays out a separate, sprawling, 15-year conspiracy to funnel millions in unreported compensation — in the form of rent-free Manhattan apartments, leased Mercedes, private-school tuition payments, and the like — to senior Trump Organization executives, including CFO Allen Weisselberg, who allegedly received $1.76 million on which he paid no taxes. Both Weisselberg and lawyers for the Trump Organization pleaded not guilty.
“To put it bluntly, this was a sweeping and audacious illegal payments scheme,” Carey Dunne, general counsel for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, said at the arraignment “Contrary to today’s assertion by the company’s former CEO, this is not a ‘standard practice in the business community,’ nor was it the act of a rogue or isolated employee.”
Granted, it’s unusual to bring a criminal tax case involving the failure to pay taxes on fringe benefits. To take one relevant example, the Internal Revenue Service dunned Ronald and Nancy Reagan for back taxes plus interest for failing to report the value of $3 million free clothes, jewelry, furs and designer dresses she received; that was a civil penalty, not a criminal prosecution.
But it’s also unusual for prosecutors to amass the kind of damning evidence of intent laid out in the indictment. Nancy Reagan probably didn’t give a second thought to the tax consequences of her designer freebies; the Trump Organization and Weisselberg appear to have thought about nothing but tax consequences. Normal businesses don’t keep two sets of books, one for the tax authorities and the other for internal use. No self-respecting prosecutor would look at this kind of evidence and take a pass.
Two things stand out in the indictment: the seemingly boundless intensity of Weisselberg’s greed and, more legally significant, the degree to which the Trump Organization was aware of, and benefited from, the tax scheme.
*Click on the link above, if you are interested in reading the article further.*
...
A/B
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