Florida congressperson asks tax assessor to re-examine Mar-A-Lago after Trump claims it is worth $1B

I think the point is, and has been all along, that T**** has either been committing fraud in his properties’ bank valuations or he’s been committing tax evasion. It’s kinda in his favor that it went the way it did, following the fraud pathway, because if it had gone tax evasion it woukd have been multiple criminal charges spread across multiple states. The problemis, he’s doubled- and tripled- down on the ultra-high valuations. The logical result is that he really believes that they are worth that much, and thus should be taxed at the (fraudulently) high values.

7 Likes

From what I’ve read, Trump bought Mar-a-Lago back in 1985 and owns it straight out (he may or may not have just transferred ownership to Jr. last month but that’s also unclear). The current legal owner is an LLC called Mar-a-Lago Inc. The Trump Org website lists Mar-a-Lago as one of it’s properties but I couldn’t find clear ownership between all the various shell companies.

Hard to know what happens next. It will probably take years to settle the dissolution of the Trump Org and nobody is quite sure yet how the assets will be moved around.

10 Likes

i read yesterday that many of his llcs are owned by other llcs, and most of those parent llcs are in fact located in… new york.

so the dissolution of his new york businesses might actually affect his entire business money-laundering network.

it’s like:

rainbow GIF

( eta: darn it, @gatto. do you see what happens when you don’t scroll down first? )

13 Likes

Season 9 Phoebe GIF by Friends

12 Likes

… if we follow the rainbow to the end, what’s the leprechaun sitting on :thinking:

5 Likes

Yes, the Trumps, and several tens of millions of Americans (at least they call themselves that) are that stupid.

2 Likes

well, we’ve all heard what ■■■■■ sits on. can gold plated toilets be melted down? and would jewish space lasers do the trick?

3 Likes

It’s apparent that no one here actually owns property (out at least hasn’t looked at their property tax bill). Tax assessment values essentially never reflect what it can sell for, even immediately after being sold. I bought my current residence for 210k, and the tax assessor value is $72828 for that year.

“But wait, you don’t live in Palm Beach!” I don’t, but the radical undervaluation exists there too. A house listed for 59,950k has a tax assessment value of $13,039k. The actual property tax on that is more than the value of my house.

A little further down the coast is an empty 2.28 acre lot selling at $150M. Mar-a-lago is 17 acres.

The tax assessment varies is probably low, but it almost assuredly would never match the actual value, so trying to use it to compare will never be valid.

1 Like

It’s entirely possible he’s been doing both. Likely even.

5 Likes

Season 3 What GIF by On My Block

Yes, he could sell it for more than the 17 million. It’s NOT worth over a billion dollars… That’s the fraud part… That when it benefited him, he claimed it was worth orders of magnitude more than the tax assessment. There is no way he could remotely get that much for it, no matter how many acres it was on.

Just… stop making excuses for him and for our fucked up system of land as a commodity.

17 Likes

Maybe you are the one not paying attention.

Most jurisdictions limit the increase in assessed value year-to-year but there is always a real assessed value in there somewhere. For my property taxes, there’s a 3% per year maximum increase, so the actual assessed value is way low. But they update the real assessed value every year and it’s pretty accurate to the potential sale value.

And as @anon61221983 points out, your example of 3x undervaluation doesn’t come close to T****’s 100x ratio. It’s immediately suspect when someone ties themselves into pretzels to excuse the fraud of such a fascist as T****.

15 Likes

I Mean Come On GIF by Late Night with Seth Meyers

14 Likes

… judges love the “everybody does it” defense

10 Likes
11 Likes

I smell landord

3 Likes

Well, that’s an aggressive tone to start with, but whatever.

Here’s part of the problem, Mar-a-Lago is not zoned as a residence. It’s zoned as a social club. Either it’s a private residence or it’s a commercial business. These things have wildly different taxable values and burdens, and you can’t just change these things on a whim. Not even in Florida.

As usual Trump is trying to have it both ways by treating Mar-a-Lago as a commercial property for the purposes of taxation and a residential property for the purposes of asset valuation. It’s all nonsense either way you slice it.

14 Likes

Defending 45’s flagrant fraud only serves to cast yourself in a bad light, comrade; just fyi.

11 Likes

which makes me curious why the county has never sued him for making it his residence. maybe they just don’t have the money for the lawyers, or don’t want to make him the mads? it seems it’d be a pretty open and shut case

10 Likes

DING DING DING!
you called it, man. PBC (palm beach county) is very ■■■■■ friendly.

assholes.

8 Likes

Still…who wants to chip in, buy Mar-a-lago, and evict the current resident?

3 Likes