“DISGRACE”: Trump likes to use this term to deride his detractors and anyone else interfering with his dominance. The latest, of course, applying to those “interfering” with the Kavanaugh appointment is an example, he calls them a disgrace. Trump said that these interferers are “harming” Kavanaugh’s family, and its not fair and a disgrace. One wonders how he would describe the situation of children being forcefully separated from their parents, and kept in the desert? The pain being suffered by these families is truly biblical and permanent.

The truth is that there are plenty of Supreme Court possible candidates that would nothave been burdened by Kavanaugh’s “baggage”. (We are sure that Trump agrees with Kavanaugh’s idea that a sitting president can’t be indicted for a crime.)

Moving on to the latest NY Times article revealing Trump family tax avoidance secrets. This article is really worth a careful read. Some of the tax avoidance schemes, such as minimizing taxable gift values of substantial assets, are fairly commonplace among wealthy families. And there are industry accepted methods to accomplish these ends. The Trump family stretched the rules in ways that were malfeasant, if not illegal.

And there were clearly some straight out illegalities too. Actually, Fraud. For example, using an affilitated Trump company, set up at inception, with the stock shares gifted to Donald and siblings (All County Building Supply & Maintenance Company), which was a purchasing agent for Trumps’ buildings. This gift, of a company which had no revenue at the time of the gift, was thus subject to little if any gift taxes.

All County dramatically marked up supplies, and services, purchased for minor sums, goods and services that were than used in the Trump buildings, which were than billed to each building as expenses. Actually marked up by millions of dollars.

As expenses, phony though they were, they created large, unjustified tax deductions for Fred Trump. True, All County had more reportable taxable revenue, but income taxes on revenue going to Donald and siblings was offset by deductible expenses  created by the ploy. And it is important to note that gift and estate tax rates were much much higher than income tax rates.

Thus, this money was effectively a further gift to “new” owners of All County, Fred Trumps’ children, though avoiding gift and estate taxes.

But worse, the marked up items, with these “trumped” up expenses, were than used to justify rent increases. Thus a double whammy, injuring both the US government and these low to middle income tenants.

By doing so, Fred Trump was able to skirt New York state rent control laws. It is OK to raise rents by legitimate maintenance and building expenses, which these were not. This was clearly and truly illegal.

New York State will undoubtedly litigate this, and easily prevail. It may take some years, and those renters might never recover the additional rents that they were forced to pay.

Our point is this. If the President and family could violate the law, and clearly harm their customers (renters), what harm are they doing to the United States?

Most Americans pay their taxes on the witholding system. That is how most Trump supporters pay too. They don’t have the luxury of using these Trump schemes. As citizens, we all have to worry that our tax system is fair to all of us. A loss of confidence in its fairness would be devastating to our country. That the president and his family is taking advantage (illegal advantage) of our tax system can lead to widespread extreme cynicism among our citizens.

who knows what the Donald absorbed of his dads’ tax tricks? What is he hiding in his tax returns anyway?

We often think about the harm that Trump is bringing to our country. Well this is another awful example. We are crying for America.

Newest development, chickens coming home to roost: https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.independent.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Famericas%2Fdonald-trump-sued-brooklyn-new-york-tenants-b1766794.html&data=04%7C01%7C%7C73dfbfe459554f23988608d89955b3cb%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637427940644588739%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=0jtgpBquG4qLi6iXXhvyCNczAldhSad3YKRNr1LZcrI%3D&reserved=0