Trump the Tax Fraudster

President* Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found.

Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help.

But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.

Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.

Trump and his family have apparently committed tax fraud, in that they evaded paying over $500 million in taxes because of the Trumps' schemes.

This may be part of the reason why Trump's refusing to release his tax returns. He couldn't be prosecuted, but all of the Trumps involved could be civilly sued for the unpaid taxes.

Trump is nothing more than a crook, a con man who has been peddling a lie that he's a self-made billionaire. But he's nothing of the sort. He's a fraud who has dumped tens of millions of Americans; a lot of whom contine to deny they've been duped.