Donald Trump may have used a classic loophole to avoid paying income taxes for decades, and he may have used his foundation to avoid paying taxes on millions more, but that doesn’t mean Donald Trump doesn’t appreciate the small things in life — like cheating the state out of sales tax, too.
Trump would go into the store with his wife, his girlfriend, his…whatever (to use his vernacular). He would then buy her an expensive necklace or wristwatch. Normally, such a transaction would face the New York city and state sales tax, which would be pretty high on luxury jewelry.
In an illegal attempt to evade the tax, Trump “asked” the store to instead ship the jewelry to an out of state location, where no New York sales tax could be collected. In fact, the store would merely send an empty jewelry box to the location, while Trump and his lady friends walked out the door with the jewelry that very day.
What happened in the “empty jewelry box” scam? Trump got caught, that’s what. But he testified against the store and didn’t face any charges for his part in the swindle.
On Monday, while also engaging in an “other people did it” defense of his personal tax write off, Trump cited all the other taxes he has to pay.
I face enormous taxes, city taxes, state taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes, employee taxes, federal taxes, vat taxes in different countries.
Well, scratch “sales taxes” off that list. As for the rest of it, that makes Trump … pretty much like every single one of us. Except that most of us pay our taxes.
Comments are closed on this story.