Trump Tax Records Reveal New Inconsistencies -- This Time for Trump Tower
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-trump-tower-tax-records-reveal-new-inconsistencies
Trump Tax Records Reveal New Inconsistencies This Time for Trump Tower
Documents show the presidents company reported different numbers higher ones to lenders, lower ones to tax officials for Trumps signature building. Last month, ProPublica revealed a similar pattern in two other Trump buildings.
Donald Trumps business reported conflicting information about a key metric to New York City property tax officials and a lender who arranged financing for his signature building, Trump Tower in Manhattan, according to tax and loan documents obtained by ProPublica. The findings add a third major Trump property to two for which ProPublica revealed similar discrepancies last month.
In the latest case, the occupancy rate of the Trump Towers commercial space was listed, over three consecutive years, as 11, 16 and 16 percentage points higher in filings to a lender than in reports to city tax officials, records show.
For example, as of December 2011 and June 2012, respectively, Trumps business told the lender that 99% and 98.7% of the towers commercial space was occupied, according to a prospectus for the loan. The figures were taken from borrower financials, the prospectus stated.
In tax filings, however, Trumps business said the buildings occupancy was 83% in January 2012 and the same a year later. The 16 percentage point gap between the loan and tax filings is a very significant difference, said Susan Mancuso, an attorney who specializes in New York property tax.
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More than a dozen tax and finance experts, presented with ProPublicas earlier findings, also said they could not decipher a reason for the differences. As with Trump Tower, the discrepancies made the two properties a skyscraper located at 40 Wall Street and the Trump International Hotel and Tower near Columbus Circle appear more profitable to the lender and less so to property tax officials.
Those discrepancies were versions of fraud, according to Nancy Wallace, a professor of finance and real estate at the Haas School of Business at the University of California-Berkeley. The penalties for false filings can include fines or criminal charges.