When the Fever Passes, Learn From Trump’s Taxes

Wall Street Journal ^ | October 12, 2018 | Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

[reaganaut1]

Last Saturday’s column on the New York Times investigation of Trump family tax dodging put aside the question of whether hefty inheritance taxes are good public policy.

Let’s take it up now. Those who complained that my nondefense “normalized” Trump-era corruption miss an obvious fact. The events took place 30 years ago. It was already normalized. The Times itself has now run two op-eds making the same point. The appraiser who valued Trump property for tax purposes, according to the paper’s investigation, was a “favorite of New York City’s big real-estate families.” Trump family lawyers and accountants were the same ones used by other real-estate developers. The family’s returns were approved and accepted by the New York State Department of Taxation and the Internal Revenue Service.

You might ask: If Times reporters can decide 30 years after the fact the Trumps didn’t pay enough taxes, why didn’t enforcement agencies decide so at the time? Trump projects were important to the city. The Trumps were big donors. Fred Trump (whose taxes we’re mostly talking about) had been tight with Mayor Abe Beame. Trump advisers would have known to a fine degree what they could get away with because they’d been working the angles for many years on behalf of many clients. Beware of the Times’s assumptions about the valuations morass. Not everything is required to be valued at market prices.

There’s a lesson here. The tax code isn’t just the rates but the loopholes and gray areas. An intelligent person wonders why it’s so full of features that work at cross-purposes. Unfortunately, a lot of people have an interest in a complicated tax system, politicians most of all. They want credit for soaking the rich, but they also want to be on friendly terms with their rich constituents

[txrefugee]

Why do veteran politicians make millions as “public servants?” Because they have wealthy supporters who want them to vote for laws that will treat them favorably. The only way to counter this is to make government less powerful, an impossibility without term limits.

[eyeamok]

I think the leaders in house should Release Diane Fineswines TAX Return to see how she values the Billions of Dollars in Taxpayer Funds and Government Contracts she has steered to her Family Business, Pelosi too.

[trebb]

Oh noze! Trumps used legal loopholes in the broken tax code.....30 years ago (sensing a pattern in the attacks) lock him up!

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

Why do veteran politicians make millions as “public servants?” Because they have wealthy supporters who want them to vote for laws that will treat them favorably. The only way to counter this is to make government less powerful, an impossibility without term limits.

This.

[ccmay]

It’s remarkable how little traction this story got. It disappeared like a puff of smoke in the Kavanaugh hurricane. The reporters who slaved over it for months must be painfully disappointed.

Any sensible person would realize that every return ever filed by a billionaire has long since been audited in excruciating detail at both the state and federal levels.

[StoneRainbow68]

——It’s remarkable how little traction this story got. It disappeared like a puff of smoke in the Kavanaugh hurricane. The reporters who slaved over it for months must be painfully disappointed.-——

Gosh, that’s too bad. lol
Seriously, there’s a lot of things about Trump that his leftist political enemies think is oh-so-super-important, but nobody else does.

——Any sensible person would realize that every return ever filed by a billionaire has long since been audited in excruciating detail at both the state and federal levels.——

Sure, but the Times was counting on low-information people concluding that Trump illegally cheated the system. These are the same crazy people who think it’s “treason” to say something negative about the CIA when you’re in a photo-op with a foreign leader. They’re unhinged loons.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

If you are behind a paywall, open a google search tab and search on the title, then right click on the WSJ link and choose “Open in private/incognito window.”

Google is not my default search engine, but this only works with google.

[Thank You Rush]

Off topic but I just remembered that I saw a “Save the Children” commercial on late TV last night complete with a lot of pictures of starving little children. Couldn’t help but wonder why one of the Clinton Foundations isn’t in there taking care of this problem. It would be neat to plaster a truck with those pictures and drive it up and down the streets in Chappaqua with a big sign - “needs help desperately from the CLINTON FOUNDATION!”

Next best thing - an audit of ALL the tax returns from every branch of the foundation. WHY isn’t this being done?

[cdcdawg]

The appraiser who valued Trump property for tax purposes, according to the paper’s investigation, was a “favorite of New York City’s big real-estate families.”

Okay, New York Times, just how deeply do you want do dig on that? It could get uncomfortable really fast.

[wbarmy]

Any sensible person would realize

Any sensible person would, as would any taxpayer. This article was not aimed at taxpayers or sensible people.

[DUMBGRUNT]

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

The Law 1850
Claude Frédéric Bastiat