US President Donald Trump defrauded the United States of America of millions of dollars through “instances of outright fraud” aimed at evading taxes, revealed a comprehensive investigation by The New York Times published on Tuesday, 2 October.
The 13,000 word article, based on a trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, claims that Trump had inherited today’s equivalent of $413 million from his father Fred C Trump. The findings contradicts Trump’s portrayal as a “self-made billionaire” who started with just a $1 million loan from his father.
The Times article further claims that Trump and his siblings in part “set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents.” It says that the president’s parents had transferred wealth worth over $1 billion to their children which would evoke a tax bill of at least $550 million under the then existing 55 percent tax rate on gifts and inheritances. However, the president has paid only $52.2 million, or about 5 percent of the taxes, with the help of variety of tax dodges., reported the New York Times article citing records of tax returns.
One of the most striking points revealed by the NYT investigation talks about how Trump was already a millionaire at the age of 8 because of his father’s wealth. The article said :
“By age 3, he was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. In his 40s and 50s, he was receiving more than $5 million a year.”
The New York Times say their findinds are based on “interviews with Fred Trump’s former employees and advisers and more than 100,000 pages of documents describing the inner workings and immense profitability of his empire.”
Trump lawyer Charles Harder denied any allegations of fraud and tax evasion and said, “President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters”. He had further noted that the affairs related to the tax were handled by “Trump’s family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals to ensure full compliance with the law.”
Backing up Trump’s claims about his wealth, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told the American newspaper that the president had taken a loan of 1$ million from his father which he had already repaid
