We’ve just learned Donald Trump paid virtually no income tax in 10 of the last 15 years. While the fragments of Trump’s finances are still being investigated, there’s one unusually large relic of his dealings just an hour’s drive north of New York City.
Last week, I went to Donald J Trump state park, a park few people know exists, because it’s not really a park. In fact, it’s two tracts of muddy, overgrown land between New York’s Putnam and Westchester counties that Trump purchased in 1998 for a total of $2.75m, hoping to build a golf course. Neighborhood officials halted the plan, citing environmental concerns, and the land was abandoned. In an alternate timeline, the story would just end here.
But we’re living in Trump’s universe. In 2006, the reality TV mogul donated the undeveloped land to New York state, claiming it was worth $100m – an amount that, if claimed as a qualified conservation contribution, could have saved him a fortune in income tax, potentially carried forward for years. (Confusingly, Trump’s 2016 campaign valued the land at $26.1m in his public list of charitable contributions.)
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
