For the sake of completeness, I’ll note that I worked administration for a law firm specializing in real estate a million years ago, and in our jurisdiction, our evictions were handed directly to the county sheriff for enforcement. So while a civil agency may need to be retained in Trump’s case, it’s not true everywhere.
Most likely a typo for ‘declare’?
This is kind of funny.
Trump defends himself by saying, basically, that “nobody knows” what is taxable and what isn’t or if anybody ever has to pay tax on anything at all.
Interesting defense… Tax laws are complicated, and nobody really knows what they’re all about, so really, there is no need to follow them at all. Basically, arguing that he can do what he wants, since he’s too stupid to understand anything. This has worked for him in the past, I guess.
“I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world. Nobody knows more about taxes.” - Donald J. Trump, May 2016
Let’s extend this out a little bit.
If the Trump theory of fringe benefits is correct, they could offer me a compensation package that consisted of an apartment, a car, school tuition for my kids, a weekly sack of cash containing $1000 and $1 per year salary and I would only have to pay taxes on the $1 in salary.
It’s ridiculous. Now, like with most things in life, no one is perfect and I suspect most companies abuse their fringe benefits occasionally, a little bit. When I was young and working as the salesperson for a very small business, my father had a serious health emergency while vacationing in California.
When I told my employer about it, he instructed me to take the week off and to book a flight and hotel on the company’s travel account. I’m sure he reported it as a business expense, and I didn’t pay taxes on the value of that travel.
This is like normal fringe benefit abuse, but what Trump was doing was paying his employees large portion of their salary with barter goods, which went unreported as income.
And NYC has criminally prosecuted tax related crimes that were way smaller than this one. The owner of a small electrical supply company that I did a little business with was criminally prosecuted for buying the alcohol he gave as Christmas gifts in New Jersey, then driving it to NYC and distributing it to clients that lived there. He didn’t get jail time, just a hefty fine and he issued a public apology.
They take this seriously for everyone, and if you’re going to do this stuff - make sure that everyone that suspects you likes you. Most investigations like this are triggered because someone blows the whistle on you, maybe an employee, maybe an investigative reporter….but once that information gets out into the public sphere, only the most corrupt law enforcement can ignore it.
It’s the past tense form of covfefe.
They kept two sets of books. The prosecutors have both sets of books. This is not “we let you charge a flight on the company’s account and neglected to report it”. This is deliberate fraud.This is something I expect to see in the movies. I repeat, there is a second, “secret” set of books that includes all of the non monetary compensation as part of the compensation packages but they submitted a completely different set of books. There is no issue of intent.
(It just makes me remember back to when I was in college and one of my father’s benefits was partial tuition for his children’s college. I remember hearing my parents late at night discussing how they were going to come up with the money for taxes-they had the money, it was just a question of liquidity. Anyway, that is what honest people do.)
I wonder if one set of books was labeled “Show to the IRS” while the other was labeled “Never Show to the IRS”
Trump never puts his money in the show.
Having two sets of books reminds me so much of the warden in Shawshank Redemption. Why on earth would they preserve incriminating evidence against themselves? Why do people who get paid very well feel the need to try to scam their way into even more?
I certainly hope there are plenty of shoes remaining to drop. Ivanka needs to account for the inauguration money. The attempts to overturn the election in Georgia should result in an indictment, let’s hope that it does. Then there’s obstruction of justice. And we still haven’t heard how the NY DA is doing with their investigation- are they saving the most significant charges for the state DA?
“Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy?”
I think this fits under the Leona Helmsley quote of
"We don’t pay taxes . Only the little people pay taxes .
and if it’s understood as a given that you don’t pay them why on earth would you need to bother understanding them.
ETA: I just read the wikipedia article on Helmsley. Other than the fact that she seemed to be a bonified successful business woman, not having had a vast fortune handed to her by her dad, she otherwise sounds like Trump in drag, even to the point of stiffing contractors,
Hee. 
Classic Wire!
It is the familiar and weak theory that the tax code is so complex as to be unconstitutionally vague. The doctrine of unconstitutional vagueness is based on the Fifth Amendment’s due process clause (at least for federal laws). Proponents of that theory perhaps do not realize that the federal taxing power is not subject to the due process clause. Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Co., 240 U.S. 1, 24-25 (1916).
~Max
I assume proponents of that theory also think that they can get superpowers by eating paste.
Oh come on, you want UltraVries to read the actual 24-page indictment to figure out what’s going on here? That’s a shit-ton of mind-numbing legalese. It’s not like the poor guy’s a lawyer.
All he needs to read is scrolled along the bottom of his FOX news channel
Funny, I am not a lawyer and really don’t have a great understanding of the tax code. Yet, I actually just read all 24 pages of the indictment and it was plain as day what it was saying. That includes what it was saying about the law and about the actions taken by the accused. Nothing complicated or vague about it to my mind.
In short Weisselberg and the Trump Org appear to be well and truly fucked. And I expect there will be more to come. The details are very specific.