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New York City will go after President Donald Trump for any taxes he owes on the money he received from his late father, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Wednesday, one day after The New York Times published a report that accused Trump of dodging tax payments on $413 million funneled to him from his dad’s real estate empire.
“It’s clear to me that there are real ramifications right now to what has been disclosed, either potential violations of law, or in cases where the statute of limitations has ended that there may be very serious civil penalties that can be applied by both the state and the city,” de Blasio said. “The city of New York is looking to recoup any money that Donald Trump owes the people of New York City, period.”
Soon after the Times released its report, based on hundreds of thousands of tax and financial documents, New York state’s Department of Taxation and Finance stated that authorities would investigate the matter.
“The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation,” a spokesman for the department, James Gazzale, said in an email Tuesday.
The mayor said the city would work with state tax authorities in the probe.
“It’s also an indictment of the culture of New York City and New York state going back decades,” de Blasio said. “There was a good old boy network that obviously Donald Trump played like a fiddle and evaded the kind of regulation and investigation and prosecution he should have received many times over.”
The mayor tweeted late Tuesday that he had directed the state finance department “to immediately investigate tax and housing violations and to work with NY State to find out if appropriate taxes were paid.”
“America doesn’t have enough money for veterans, kids + seniors because of rich people who cheat on their taxes like you @RealDonaldTrump,” de Blasio tweeted Wednesday morning.
According to the Times, Trump participated in schemes that allowed his father to give him at least $413 million while keeping tax payments to a minimum. He reportedly helped his parents dodge taxes, creating a sham corporation to disguise the millions of dollars in gifts from his parents, assisting his father in taking improper tax deductions, and undervaluing the real estate assets of his parents on tax returns to reduce the amount they owed to the government.
A spokesperson for New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood declined to comment to Newsweek on Wednesday.
It is unlikely that any criminal charges will be filed against Trump because of statutes of limitation, unless the department uncovers instances of recent criminal activity. A civil case wouldn’t face the same limitations.
Trump denied the Times’s report through his attorney Charles Harder.
“The New York Times’s allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” Harder said in a statement. “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which the Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate.”
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