NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday expressed outrage over a New York Times report that he received at least $413 million from his father over the decades, much of that through dubious tax dodges, including outright fraud.
Trump accused the newspaper of "doing a very old, boring and often told hit piece on me." In a tweet, he said: "Added up, this means that 97% of their stories on me are bad. Never recovered from bad election call!"
The New York state tax department told The Associated Press that it was reviewing the allegations in The Times and "is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation." The department typically refers findings to the state attorney general's office.
The Times said the Trump family hid millions of dollars of transfers from the father to his children through a sham company owned by the children called All County Building Supply & Maintenance. It was set up in 1992 ostensibly as a purchasing agent to supply Fred Trump's buildings with boilers, cleaning supplies and other goods, and the father would pad invoices with markups of 20 percent or even 50 percent, thereby avoiding gift taxes, the newspaper reported.
The report said that before Fred Trump died in the late 1990s, he transferred ownership of most of his real estate empire to his four living children. The value of the properties in tax returns summed up to $41.4 million, vastly less than The Times said they were worth.
In total, the president's father and mother transferred over $1 billion to their children, according to the newspaper's tally. That should have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million, based on a 55 percent tax on gifts and inheritance at the time.
Tax experts cited in the report say that Trump was unlikely to face criminal prosecution in helping his parents evade taxes because the maneuvers occurred long ago and were past the statute of limitation.
The Times report said documents it reviewed show that the future president was earning $200,000 a year in today's dollars at the age of 3. By the time Trump had graduated from college, the report says, he was getting the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father.