Clinical Professor Elizabeth Maresca was quoted in a Time article regarding the New York Times report about the Trump family’s business dealings.
The findings in the Times report contradict the mythology Trump created about himself: that he’s a self-made billionaire who became a real estate mogul through a $1 million loan from his father. According to the Times, Trump received $413 million from his father across the decades. The report found that in all, the Trump parents transferred more than $1 billion of wealth to their children. Under the 55% tax rate of the time, that amount could have produced $550 million in taxes. The Trumps paid $52.2 million in taxes, about 5%, according to the Times.
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Elizabeth Maresca, a tax law professor at Fordham University School of Law and a former trial attorney for the Internal Revenue Service’s Office of Chief Counsel, points to another claim in the Times story, in which Fred Trump exchanged Donald Trump’s $11 million in unpaid debt to him for a $15.5 million investment in Trump Palace.