He legitimately got a fuck ton of money from some office buildings he owns a minority stake in. In a super on brand series of events he got the ownership stake after losing a lawsuit to develop Hudson Yards.
People with real money donât run fake university scams.
I feel this is a very common misconception that rich people donât do shitty scams. Martha Stewart and Mark Cuban committed securities fraud for a few hundred k each. Lots of rich celebrities did crypto scams - Kim K, Floyd, etc.
My theory is that Trump gets grifted just as hard as he grifts, like his accountants are probably slowly amassing their own fortunes and just making up the numbers they show him since heâs dumb and has no attention span anyway.
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Cmon itâs not like any of these people actually did anything themselves they just let assholes talk them into putting their name on some grift.
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If youâre expecting logical consistency from Donnie Dumb Dumb in 2022 I donât know what to tell you.
America is designed to create wealth for the wealthy. Once you get to the point where your wealth is so large that itâs practically impossible to spend it on consumable goods, your own wealth attains a kind of escape velocity and the system more or less takes over and drives your wealth up. Itâs impossible at that point to literally hold all your money in cash, your wealth will by necessity be in the form of various assets, and the primary goal of policy makers is to make asset values go up. As has been pointed out many time, he has less money than he would have if he had invested his inheritance in the S&P index and retired to Florida. Incompetence destroys wealth for regular people, but it canât overcome the systemâs inherent bias to make the richest people get even richer no matter what.
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And thatâs why fixing America might require a wealth-destroying cataclysm worse than the Great Depression.
Call me old but I remember when the IRS was as feared as AT&T. Now Ma Bell is long dead and the IRS is intimidated by any third rate huckster who can afford to buy a little influence. Though to be fair, third rate hucksters are currently threatening world domination.
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I donât think that you even have to challenge the IRS on anything, Republicans gutted the IRS intentionally so they donât have the resources to audit and chase down people even if they want to.
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My main conclusion here is that Obama needs better tax planners. He should hit up Justin Trudeau for some tips on hiding family wealth offshore.
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FYP.
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Partnership returns are basically on the honor system. Itâs disgusting.
This is 'Merica, no one cares about poor people. You wanna complain about it, peasant?
The IRS was intimidated by Scientology in the 70s. The Germans didnât put up with that kind of stuff and designated them a cult.
The IRS is basically handcuffed by republicans intentionally handcuffing it.
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This is another way that maintains the power structure. Unless you start rich, a lot of your earnings will be income rather than owning stuff. So you pay a lot more tax on that.
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To be honest, my memory is mainly filled with scenes from 70s sitcoms where characters were audited by the IRS. And the auditors showed up at your place to get the receipts! Ted Baxter and Mary are each audited in separate episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
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WASHINGTON â Before Donald J. Trump became president and after, his exceedingly complex and voluminous tax returns came under regular scrutiny by the Internal Revenue Service. The number of agents assigned to the audit team: one.
After he left office, the I.R.S. said it was beefing up the audit team, to three. The tax agency itself acknowledged that it was still overwhelmed by the complexity of Mr. Trumpâs finances and the resistance mounted by the former president and his sophisticated army of accountants and lawyers, which included a former I.R.S. chief counsel and raised questions early last year about why even three revenue agents should be assigned to audit him.