DragonI

Jared Kushner apparently paid almost no federal income tax for years. Which makes us ask: why did it take him so many times to get his financial disclosures right last year?

— Citizens for Ethics‏ @CREWcrew - Oct 14, 2018

How Jared Kushner Avoided Paying Taxes

President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser appears to have paid almost no federal income taxes for several years running.

www.nytimes.com

Jared Kushner has a net worth of almost $324 million, and his company has been profitable. But Mr. Kushner, who is President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, appears to have paid almost  no federal income taxes for several years running, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times.

[Read the full story about how Mr. Kushner appears to have paid almost no income taxes.]

Kushner Companies buys a property. The majority of the money for the purchase comes in the form of mortgages and personal loans from banks.

Under the federal tax code, real estate investors can write off the purchase price of the building — excluding the cost of the land — over a period of decades. Although Kushner Companies has spent little or no cash of its own, the firm takes large annual deductions based on the theoretical depreciation of the building.

The property generates cash for the Kushners. But any earnings, which would be subject to the federal income tax, are swamped by the amount that the company is taking in write-offs for depreciation. The result is that Kushner Companies records a net loss for tax purposes.

The company passes on that loss to its owners, including Mr. Kushner and his father, Charles.

The loss can be used to offset the Kushners’ income in the year it is recorded, and it can be carried forward to cancel out future income or to get refunds for taxes they paid in previous years.

When Kushner Companies sells a property, it can use the proceeds to finance a new acquisition. If done within the right time frame, the company can indefinitely defer any capital-gains taxes it might owe on the sale of the original property.

The outcome is apparent in Jared Kushner’s tax returns, which were summarized in the documents reviewed by The New York Times. Here’s an example from 2015.

Opinion | We knew Trump was incredibly corrupt. Turns out he may also be an epic tax cheat.

Blockbuster revelations charge hundreds of millions of dollars in tax evasion.

www.washingtonpost.com

They demonstrate that not only has Trump been lying for years about the enormous amount of money he was given by his father, but also Fred Trump, Donald Trump and Donald’s siblings were engaged in what amounted to a years-long conspiracy to commit tax fraud:

“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.“

• He ran scams like Trump University to con struggling people out of their money.
• He lent his name to pyramid schemes.
• He bankrupted casinos and still somehow made millions while others were left holding the bag.
• He refused to pay vendors.
• He exploited foreign workers.
• He used illegal labor.
• He discriminated against African American renters.
• He violated Federal Trade Commission rules on stock purchases.
• He did business with the mob and with Eastern European kleptocrats. His properties became the go-to vehicle for Russian oligarchs and mobsters to launder their money. 

President Trump has sold himself as a self-made billionaire but a Times investigation found that he received more than $400 million from his father’s empire, much of it through dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud.

— The New York Times‏  @nytimes - Oct 2, 2018

• NYTimes reviewed more than 100,000 pages of documents
• By the time Trump was 3 years old, Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today's dollars. 
• By the time he was 8, he was a millionaire.
• After graduating from college, Trump was receiving the equivalent in today's dollars of $1 million annually from his father. 
• The Trump family created a company called All County Building Supply & Maintenance.which siphoned millions from Fred Trump's empire by marking up purchases that were already made.

Let’s wrench power back from the billionaires | Bernie Sanders

If we stand together against powerful special interests we can eliminate poverty, increase life expectancy and tackle climate change, writes US senator Bernie Sanders

www.theguardian.com|Bernie Sanders

Difficult as it is to comprehend, the fact is that the six richest people on Earth now own more wealth than the bottom half of the world’s population – 3.7 billion people. Further, the top 1% now have more money than the bottom 99%. Meanwhile, as the billionaires flaunt their opulence, nearly one in seven people struggle to survive on less than $1.25 (90p) a day and – horrifyingly – some 29,000 children die daily from entirely preventable causes such as diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia.

At the same time, all over the world corrupt elites, oligarchs and anachronistic monarchies spend billions on the most absurd extravagances. The Sultan of Brunei owns some 500 Rolls-Royces and lives in one of the world’s largest palaces, a building with 1,788 rooms once valued at $350m. In the Middle East, which boasts five of the world’s 10 richest monarchs, young royals jet-set around the globe while the region suffers from the highest youth unemployment rate in the world, and at least 29 million children are living in poverty without access to decent housing, safe water or nutritious food.

Amazon warehouses across the country, his employees often work long, gruelling hours and earn wages so low they rely on Medicaid, food stamps and public housing paid for by US taxpayers.

Millions of people are working longer hours for lower wages than they did 40 years ago, in both the United States and many other countries. They look on, feeling helpless in the face of a powerful few who buy elections, and a political and economic elite that grows wealthier, even as their own children’s future grows dimmer.

In the midst of all of this economic disparity, the world is witnessing an alarming rise in authoritarianism and rightwing extremism – which feeds off, exploits and amplifies the resentments of those left behind, and fans the flames of ethnic and racial hatred.

• Paradise Papers: Secrets Of The Global Elite
• The Panama Papers: Exposing the Rogue Offshore Finance Industry

Here is just one example of what we have to do. Just a few years ago, the Tax Justice Network estimated that the wealthiest people and largest corporations throughout the world have been stashing at least $21tn-$32tn in offshore tax havens in order to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

If we work together to eliminate offshore tax abuse, the new revenue that would be generated could put an end to global hunger, create hundreds of millions of new jobs, and substantially reduce extreme income and wealth inequality. It could be used to move us aggressively toward sustainable agriculture and to accelerate the transformation of our energy system away from fossil fuels and towards renewable sources of power.

• how much will Google bring back to America?
• how much of the repatriated money will go into jobs?

• Alphabet’s Google (GOOG, GOOGL) moved $19.2B to a Bermuda shell company in 2016 to save $3.7B in taxes, according to regulatory filings from the Netherlands.
• Why would the Netherlands report on Bermuda money? Google used two tax avoidance structures called the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich”
• Google shifted revenue from an Irish subsidiary to a Dutch company with no employees and on to a Bermuda location owned by an Ireland-registered company.
• Google moved 7% more through this structure in 2016 than the prior year. Google’s global effective tax rate was 19.3%.
• Ireland closed the “Double Irish” portion of the structure in 2015, but companies already using it could continue until the end of 2020.
• Regulators around the world have pressured Google to pay more taxes. The recently passed U.S. tax law provides a one-time, 15.5% repatriation tax rate for companies moving cash back home.  
• Google spokesman’s statement to Bloomberg: “We pay all the taxes due and comply with the tax laws in every country we operate in around the world. We remain committed to helping grow the online ecosystem.”  
• Previously: Ireland closer to collecting Apple taxes (Nov. 21, 2017)
• Previously: France wants to make a tax deal with Google ahead of appeal(July 24, 2017)

• Google held $60.7 billion overseas at the end of 2016 on which it hadn’t yet paid U.S. income taxes or “foreign withholding taxes,” the company said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 

This segment originally aired on November 6, 2017, on VICE News Tonight on HBO. 

After nine months of secret collaboration, a global team of over 380 investigative journalists released the findings of one of the largest troves of leaked documents in history last week: the Paradise Papers.

The investigation, shepherded by the same team that released the Panama Papers, offers unprecedented insight into the clients and business activities related to a Bermuda-based offshore services law firm called Appleby.

VICE News Tonight on HBO went behind the scenes from Day One of the Paradise Papers, with exclusive access to the investigative reporters working in secret across continents to expose an unseen world of offshore accounts, hidden money, and financial maneuvering at the highest levels of politics, business, and finance. 

ICIJ collaborated with more than 380 journalists working on six continents in 30 languages. 

• Many team members spent a year using online platforms to communicate and to share documents.
• Journalists tracked down court records
• obtained financial disclosures of politicians in Africa, Europe, and Latin and North America
• filed freedom of information requests
• conducted hundreds of interviews with tax experts, policymakers and industry insiders. 

— About the Paradise Papers Investigation - ICIJ

The leaked documents show how deeply the offshore financial system is entangled with the overlapping worlds of political players, private wealth and corporate giants, including Apple, Nike, Uber and other global companies that avoid taxes through increasingly imaginative bookkeeping maneuvers.

— Irish Times, Inside Politics