A yearslong IRS inquiry into Donald Trump's claims of massive financial losses on his Chicago skyscraper could result in a tax bill of more than $100 million, with losses totaling $168 million over a decade. Trump's lawyers shifted ownership to DJT Holdings LLC to claim tax-reducing losses, sparking the inquiry. The audit, as reported in December 2022, continued, with Trump's son Eric expressing confidence in their position backed by tax experts' opinion letters.
New York v. Trump is a civil investigation and lawsuit by the office of the New York Attorney General (AG) alleging that The Trump Organization and several individuals (including operative members of the Trump family) engaged in financial fraud by presenting vastly disparate property values to potential lenders and tax officials, in violation of New York Executive Law § 63(12). A trial took place from October 2023 to January 2024. As a result of the trial, the presiding judge Arthur Engoron ordered the defendants to disgorge a total of US$364 million of ill-gotten gains, among other penalties.AG Letitia James began investigating the organization in early 2019, with public litigation beginning in August 2020 to support her subpoenas in the inquiry. In February 2022, Engoron ruled in favor of James's subpoenas, and that April, Donald Trump was found in contempt of court for not complying with them and Trump was fined $110,000.In September 2022, the AG sued Donald, his three oldest children (Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric), former chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, former controller Jeffrey McConney, and ten related companies. That November, Engoron appointed retired judge Barbara S. Jones to monitor the organization regarding potential future fraud. In 2023, Ivanka was released as a defendant due to an expired statute of limitations.In September 2023, Engoron issued a summary judgment that Trump and his company had committed fraud for years. The judge ordered the termination of the defendants' state business licenses and the dissolution of pertinent limited liability companies (pending appeal). The trial covered six additional claims by the AG and considered further penalties. In October, a gag order was placed on Trump, forbidding him from publicly disparaging court staff; the judge fined Trump $5,000 and $10,000 for two violations of the order that same month. The defense unsuccessfully sought to dismiss the case, as well as related subpoenas and rulings.In February 2024, Engoron concluded that the "defendants failed to accept responsibility or to impose internal controls to prevent future recurrences" of having "submitted blatantly false financial data" to "borrow more and at lower rates". Engoron assessed Donald Trump and his companies $354 million of disgorgement of ill-gotten gains (not including interest), while Eric and Donald Jr. were assessed $4 million each, and Weisselberg $1 million. These four and McConney were also banned from leading New York organizations from two to three years; Weisselberg and McConney were also permanently banned from having any financial control in such organizations. The provisions of the judgement are under appeal.
The Trump Organization is an American privately-owned conglomerate owned by Donald Trump. It serves as the holding company for all of Trump's business ventures and investments, with around 250 of its affiliates and subsidiaries using the Trump name. Donald Trump joined the organization in 1968, began leading it in 1971, renamed it around 1973, and handed off its leadership to his children in 2017 after he won the 2016 United States presidential election. The Trump Organization, through its various constituent companies and partnerships, has or has had interests in real estate development, investing, brokerage, sales and marketing, and property management. Trump Organization entities own, operate, invest in, and develop residential real estate, hotels, resorts, residential towers, and golf courses in various countries. They also operate or have operated in construction, hospitality, casinos, entertainment, book and magazine publishing, broadcast media, model management, retail, financial services, food and beverages, business education, online travel, commercial and private aviation, and beauty pageants. Trump Organization entities also own the New York television production company that produced the reality television franchise The Apprentice. Retail operations include or have included fashion apparel, jewelry and accessories, books, home furnishings, lighting products, bath textiles and accessories, bedding, home fragrance products, small leather goods, vodka, wine, barware, steaks, chocolate bars, and bottled spring water.Since the financial statements of the Trump Organization's holdings and Donald Trump's personal tax returns are both private, its true value is not publicly known, though a wide range of estimates have been made. Trump has publicly released little definitive financial documentation to confirm his valuation claims. On several occasions, Trump has been accused of deliberately inflating the valuation of Trump Organization properties through aggressive lobbying of the media (in particular the authors of the annual Forbes 400 list) to bolster his perceived net worth.By 2019, the Trump Organization was being scrutinized by New York investigators for possible financial fraud. In July 2021, New York prosecutors charged the organization with 10 counts in an alleged 15-year tax avoidance scheme. In November, The Washington Post reported that between 2011 and 2015 the organization presented several properties as being worth far more to potential lenders than to tax officials. In August 2022, the organization's chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty to committing more than a dozen felonies, including criminal tax fraud and grand larceny. In September 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James announced a civil lawsuit against the organization. A separate criminal case by the Manhattan district attorney was brought to trial in October; on December 6, the organization was convicted on 17 criminal charges.In September 2023, the judge presiding over the civil suit ruled that Trump, his adult sons and the organization repeatedly committed fraud and ordered their New York business certificates canceled and their business entities sent into receivership for dissolution in what has been described by observers as a "corporate death penalty". Trump and the organization were ordered to pay nearly $355 million before interest in February 2024, with further restrictions placed on the Trump Organization's business certificates, and on both Trump and his adult sons' ability to do business in New York.
The net worth of Donald Trump is not publicly known. Forbes has estimated his wealth for decades and estimates it at $2.6 billion as of 2024, with Trump making much higher claims. Trump received gifts, loans, and inheritance from his father. His primary business has been real estate ventures, including hotels, casinos, and golf courses. He also made money from Trump-branded products including neckties and steaks. Money received through political fundraisers is used to pay for guest stays at properties owned by the Trump Organization and to pay his and his allies' lawyers.
In 2013, the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS), under the Obama administration, revealed that it had selected political groups applying for tax-exempt status for intensive scrutiny based on their names or political themes. This led to wide condemnation of the agency and triggered several investigations, including a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) criminal probe ordered by United States Attorney General Eric Holder. Conservatives claimed that they were specifically targeted by the IRS, but an exhaustive report released by the Treasury Department's Inspector General in 2017 found that from 2004 to 2013, the IRS used both conservative and liberal keywords to choose targets for further scrutiny.Initial reports described the selections as nearly exclusively of conservative groups with terms such as "Tea Party" in their names. According to Republican lawmakers, liberal-leaning groups and the Occupy movement had also triggered additional scrutiny, but at a lower rate than conservative groups. The Republican majority on the House Oversight Committee issued a report, which concluded that although some liberal groups were selected for additional review, the scrutiny that these groups received did not amount to targeting when compared to the greater scrutiny received by conservative groups. The report was criticized by the committee's Democratic minority, which said that the report ignored evidence that the IRS used keywords to identify both liberal and conservative groups.In January 2014, James Comey, who at the time was the FBI director, told Fox News that its investigation had found no evidence so far warranting the filing of federal criminal charges in connection with the controversy, as it had not found any evidence of "enemy hunting", and that the investigation continued. On October 23, 2015, the Justice Department declared that no criminal charges would be filed. On September 8, 2017, the Trump Justice Department declined to reopen the criminal investigation into Lois Lerner, a central figure in the controversy.In October 2017, the Trump administration agreed to settle a lawsuit filed on behalf of more than four hundred conservative nonprofit groups who claimed that they had been discriminated against by the Internal Revenue Service for an undisclosed amount described by plaintiffs' counsel as "very substantial." The Trump administration also agreed to settle a second lawsuit brought by forty-one conservative organizations with an apology and an admission from the IRS that subjecting them to "heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays" was wrongful.
The People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump is a pending criminal case against Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States. On March 30, 2023, Trump was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury for his alleged role in a scandal relating to hush money payments made to the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, making him the first U.S. president to be indicted. Trump faces 34 felony charges of falsifying business records in the first degree, carrying a maximum sentence of 136 years if Trump is convicted on all counts.Trump traveled from his residence in Florida to New York City on April 3, 2023 where he surrendered to the Manhattan District Attorney's office on the afternoon of April 4. After his arraignment, he immediately returned to Florida. The trial was set for March 25, 2024.Throughout the investigation that led to the indictment, Trump accused district attorney Alvin Bragg—the case's prosecutor—of having political motivations. Months before he was indicted, Trump declared that he would run in the 2024 presidential election; neither the indictment nor any resulting conviction would disqualify his candidacy.
During and after his term as President of the United States, Donald Trump made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims. The Washington Post's fact-checkers documented 30,573 false or misleading claims during his presidential term, an average of about 21 per day. The Toronto Star tallied 5,276 false claims from January 2017 to June 2019, an average of 6.1 per day. Commentators and fact-checkers have described the scale of Trump's mendacity as "unprecedented" in American politics, and the consistency of falsehoods a distinctive part of his business and political identities. Scholarly analysis of Trump's tweets found "significant evidence" of an intent to deceive.By June 2019, after initially resisting, many news organizations began to describe some of his falsehoods as "lies". The Washington Post said his frequent repetition of claims he knew to be false amounted to a campaign based on disinformation. Trump campaign CEO and presidency chief strategist Steve Bannon said that the press, rather than Democrats, was Trump's primary adversary and "the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit."As part of their attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Trump and his allies repeatedly falsely claimed there had been massive election fraud and that Trump had won the election. Their effort was characterized by some as an implementation of the big lie propaganda technique.On June 8, 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump on one count of making "false statements and representations", specifically by hiding subpoenaed classified documents from his own attorney who was trying to find and return them to the government. In August 2023, 21 of Trump's falsehoods about the 2020 election were listed in his Washington, D.C. indictment, while 27 were listed in his Georgia indictment.
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump received a Bachelor of Science in economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968, and his father named him president of his real estate business in 1971. Trump renamed it the Trump Organization and reoriented the company toward building and renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. After a series of business failures in the late twentieth century, he successfully launched side ventures that required little capital, mostly by licensing the Trump name. From 2004 to 2015, he co-produced and hosted the reality television series The Apprentice. He and his businesses have been plaintiff or defendant in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, including six business bankruptcies.Trump won the 2016 presidential election as the Republican Party nominee against Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton while losing the popular vote. During the campaign, his political positions were described as populist, protectionist, isolationist, and nationalist. His election and policies sparked numerous protests. He was the first U.S. president with no prior military or government experience. A special counsel investigation established that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to favor Trump's campaign. Trump promoted conspiracy theories and made many false and misleading statements during his campaigns and presidency, to a degree unprecedented in American politics. Many of his comments and actions have been characterized as racially charged or racist and many as misogynistic.As president, Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, diverted military funding toward building a wall on the U.S.–Mexico border, and implemented a policy of family separations for migrants detained at the U.S. border. He weakened environmental protections, rolling back more than 100 environmental policies and regulations. He signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which cut taxes for individuals and businesses and rescinded the individual health insurance mandate penalty of the Affordable Care Act. He appointed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. He reacted slowly to the COVID-19 pandemic, ignored or contradicted many recommendations from health officials, used political pressure to interfere with testing efforts, and spread misinformation about unproven treatments. Trump initiated a trade war with China and withdrew the U.S. from the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un three times but made no progress on denuclearization.Trump refused to concede after losing the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden, falsely claiming widespread electoral fraud, and attempted to overturn the results by pressuring government officials, mounting scores of unsuccessful legal challenges, and obstructing the presidential transition. On January 6, 2021, he urged his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol, which many of them then attacked, resulting in multiple deaths and interrupting the electoral vote count.Trump is the only American president to have been impeached twice. After he tried to pressure Ukraine in 2019 to investigate Biden, he was impeached by the House of Representatives for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress; he was acquitted by the Senate in February 2020. The House impeached him again in January 2021, for incitement of insurrection, and the Senate acquitted him in February. Scholars and historians rank Trump as one of the worst presidents in American history.Since leaving office, Trump has continued to dominate the Republican Party and is a candidate in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries. In 2023, a civil trial jury found that Trump sexually abused E. Jean Carroll. In 2024, a New York state court found Trump liable for financial fraud. Trump is appealing both judgments. He was also indicted in New York on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records, in Florida on 40 felony counts related to his mishandling of classified documents, in Washington, D.C., on four felony counts of conspiracy and obstruction for efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and in Georgia on 13 charges of racketeering and other alleged felonies committed in an effort to overturn the state's 2020 election results. Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Donald Trump's hush money trial in New York continues with the cross-examination of Stormy Daniels by the defense team. Trump pleads not guilty to charges of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to Daniels and denies allegations of a sexual encounter. BBC's Nada Tawfik covers Daniels' defiant testimony during the trial. The BBC News app offers optimized mobile viewing for updates.
Lael Brainard, director of the White House National Economic Council, will advocate for higher corporate and wealthy individual tax rates to address the challenge of expiring 2017 tax cuts. President Biden aims to extend middle-class tax cuts while increasing taxes on profitable companies and the wealthiest Americans. If the tax cuts expire, U.S. households face higher IRS payments, while extending them would add $4.6 trillion to the national debt. Brainard criticizes the 2017 tax cuts for benefiting the wealthy disproportionately. Biden pledges not to raise taxes for those earning less than $400,000 and proposes increased contributions from corporations and the wealthy.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is the revenue service for the United States federal government, which is responsible for collecting U.S. federal taxes and administering the Internal Revenue Code, the main body of the federal statutory tax law. It is an agency of the Department of the Treasury and led by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, who is appointed to a five-year term by the President of the United States. The duties of the IRS include providing tax assistance to taxpayers; pursuing and resolving instances of erroneous or fraudulent tax filings; and overseeing various benefits programs, including the Affordable Care Act.The IRS originates from the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, a federal office created in 1862 to assess the nation's first income tax to fund the American Civil War. The temporary measure funded over a fifth of the Union's war expenses before being allowed to expire a decade later. In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, authorizing Congress to impose a tax on income and leading to the creation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. In 1953, the agency was renamed the Internal Revenue Service, and in subsequent decades underwent numerous reforms and reorganizations, most significantly in the 1990s.Since its establishment, the IRS has been responsible for collecting most of the revenue needed to fund the federal government, albeit while facing periodic controversy and opposition over its methods, constitutionality, and the principle of taxation generally. In recent years the agency has struggled with budget cuts and reduced morale. As of 2018, it saw a 15 percent reduction in its workforce, including a decline of more than 25 percent of its enforcement staff. Nevertheless, during the 2017 fiscal year, the agency processed more than 245 million tax returns.
The Indian Revenue Service (IAST: Bhāratīya Rājasva Sevā), often abbreviated as IRS, is an Indian government agency that is primarily responsible for collecting and administering direct and indirect taxes. As a central civil service under Group A of the executive branch of the Government of India, it functions under the Department of Revenue of the Ministry of Finance and is under the administrative direction of the Revenue Secretary and the ministerial command of the Minister of Finance.The IRS comprises two branches, Indian Revenue Service (Income Tax) and Indian Revenue Service (Custom & Indirect Taxes), controlled by two separate statutory bodies, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) and the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC). The duties of the IRS (IT) include among others, formulation of domestic direct tax policy (through the Tax Policy and Legislation Section), formulation of international tax policy (through the Foreign Tax and Tax Research Division), handling policy matters in respect of investigation of tax evasion (through the Investigation Section), updating, resolving and maintaining the relevant laws (through the ITA Division), administering the direct tax policy (through its field offices across the country), and administering all the associated administrative functions pertaining to direct taxes. The duties of the IRS (C&IT) include formulation and enforcement of policy concerning the Goods and Services Tax, prevention of smuggling, and administration of matters related to Customs and Narcotics.In the 2017-2018 financial year (i.e. 1st April 2017 to 31st March 2018), the IRS (IT) received 5,87,13,458 returns and collected direct taxes amounting to ₹11.37 trillion, spending ₹60,000 (equivalent to ₹91,000 or US$1,100 in 2023) for every ₹1,000 (equivalent to ₹1,500 or US$19 in 2023) it collected. The relative contribution of direct tax to the overall tax collection of the Central Government has risen from about 36% to 56% over the period of 2000–01 to 2013–14. The contribution of direct tax-to-GDP has doubled (from about 3% to 6%) during the same period.
One of Donald Trump's closest White House aides has concluded her testimony in the former president's hush money trial, paving the way for key witness Michael Cohen to testify regarding the hush money agreement negotiated with Stormy Daniels in 2016 and how Trump repaid him the following year. Cohen's testimony is crucial to prosecutors' charges of Trump falsifying business records to hide reimbursements before the 2016 election. Cohen's prior federal charges and changing loyalty from Trump defender to chief antagonist are significant factors in the trial.
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