By Michael Rothfeld and Alexandra Berzon
Nov. 2, 2016
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has said that his mastery of the federal tax code has allowed him to legally avoid paying federal income taxes.
He has talked less about his efforts to avoid paying other types of taxes.
During his long career as a businessman, Mr. Trump has faced lawsuits, audits, and other investigations over the decades for delinquent or unpaid taxes that he or a variety of businesses controlled by him owed, according to taxing authorities and public records.
Alan Garten, an attorney for Mr. Trump, said Mr. Trump “has always paid applicable sales taxes and has never used ‘loopholes’ to lessen or avoid his or his company’s tax burden.” Mr. Garten said that Mr. Trump and his companies sometimes undergo audits and have resolved issues that arose.
Several cases – such as a jewelry store tax-evasion scheme Mr. Trump was involved in and a complex set of negotiations to avoid paying taxes on an expensive yacht – have been written on before.
“Every day all of the lawyers and advisers for both sides would get on the yacht and motor off to a point at least twelve miles from the Italian coast so the deal could be consummated in international waters and nobody would have to pay taxes,” Mr. Trump wrote in a 1990 book, “Surviving at the Top.”
In the case of the jewelry store, which shipped empty boxes out of state in the 1980s to help purchasers avoid New York sales taxes, Mr. Trump and other celebrity customers weren’t charged because prosecutors needed them as witnesses against the store and its executives, according to people familiar with the investigation. Mr. Garten noted that only store executives were charged.
The Journal has found several additional examples of state and local tax issues for Mr. Trump and his companies that are little known or not previously reported on. Among them:
– A vendor said in a legal deposition in 2008 that Mr. Trump refused to pay $48,000 in sales taxes on draperies for a Las Vegas property. The vendor, Larry Walters, quit the project amid broader complaints that he wasn’t getting paid what he said he was owed. Mr. Trump’s attorneys said in a legal filing that sales tax had already been paid on the fabric purchase. But under Nevada law, sales tax also must be paid on labor.
Earlier this year, Mr. Walters told the Journal that he paid Mr. Trump’s sales tax himself. He didn’t respond to recent requests for further comment.
Mr. Garten said the state of Nevada later conducted an audit on the Trump development project and “any open issues were immediately resolved.” Nevada officials said they don’t comment on audits.
– At least five federal, state and local tax collection agencies took out at least 26 liens on Mr. Trump’s businesses and him personally since the late 1990s due to claims that Mr. Trump or his businesses didn’t pay sales taxes, withholding taxes, or other corporate taxes. The amounts were relatively small; sales taxes, for instance, are assessed only on a small fraction of an item’s cost.
Businesses that had tax liens or warrants, which have since been settled, included bottled-water company Trump Ice, the Trump Shuttle, Trump Airlines, Trump Mortgage and Mr. Trump’s television production company.
Mr. Trump himself in 1999 paid off a state income tax bill of about $1,500 from six years earlier, after Indiana filed a tax warrant against him, public records in Indiana show
Mr. Garten said he had no records of any existing liens on any Trump businesses.
– The biggest amount in liens and warrants, totaling about $11.8 million, were for corporate taxes imposed on his Indiana casino business in the early 2000s. According to securities filings, Trump Indiana was hit in 2004 with a $20 million bill for back taxes from the Indiana Department of Revenue after the state determined that gambling companies couldn’t use a certain tax deduction.
Mr. Trump’s Indiana entity, owned by a publicly-traded casino company that had him as its CEO and chairman, agreed to a payment plan on back taxes before it was sold in 2005, according to securities filings. The tax warrants have since been satisfied, records show.
Mr. Garten said that he could not respond to questions regarding the casino company because he said that Mr. Trump has not been involved in it in close to a decade.
No comments:
Post a Comment