More Trump fraud: businesses keep 2 sets of numbers, one for taxes, the other to get loans

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:None of this is surprising. Remember reporting about a deposition Trump had to do (don't recall what the litigation was about) where he said he had majority ownership in some enterprise even though he actually had 30% and how his view was totally based on how he personally looked at things. Remember the NYT investigation into Trump family finances where the same property had one value reported to the IRS (typically because it was transferred to kids) and another value--like 10x higher--when it was sold or otherwise valued after the transfer. Or Trump's snits any time Fortune didn't rate his net worth as high as he wanted.

The "two sets of books" is not really what it s about. Shady financial dealings is.

Well, that's fine that we shine a light on Trump's shady dealings. But it does not help this process to make a big deal out of different tax filing vs lender submission figures, and certainly not a conclusion of fraud. This type of analysis makes it all too easy for Trump to dismiss the inquiry as a witch hunt.

This, ironically, is exactly the type of behavior the “Trumpkins” are accused of round these parts.

Personally, I believe that a Trumpkin is someone who will accept any rumor about Hillary as fact, but dismiss fact checks on Trump as politically-biased opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am with the cautious and patient accountant here.

Prop Publica's investigation seems to have consisted of showing the documents to "a dozen real estate professionals." Not one appears to have been an accountant. Rather, they all seem to be lawyers, real estate finance professors, and even, for some reason an appraiser/paralegal.

The one accountant quoted appears to have been interviewed by Pro Publica and does not seem to have seen the underlying documents.

Investigating these documents would be a job for a forensic accountant, a somewhat rare specialty among accountants. No accountant I know, and I work closely with a number of accountants, would put any stock whatsoever in this article. It simply is not convincing from an accounting point of view and raises more questions than it answers.

This is not to say there is no fraud as accounting PP keeps insisting to resistant DCUM ears. There may well be, but this article is all innuendo and should not be viewed as based on solid accounting fact finding.

Yes, we are aware that a news article is not a financial statement. But you don't need to be an accountant to recognize that inflating your income for banks while deflating it for the IRS is suspicious. Couple that with Trump's obvious lie that can't release ANY tax returns because he has.been under audit for like the last 50 years and a reasonable person would conclude that he has something to hide. Unless you are an accountant, which apparently prohibits you from observing empty cookie jars without a certified cookie ledger and a memo from the forensics department.

You are, at least, a bit more circumspect in your declarations. Wouldn't the logical next step be to call for further investigation of the underlying financial and legal documents, before jumping to conclusions that fraud definitely has been committed? Or are you suggesting that the existence of soooo much smoke coupled with Trump's resistance to any sort of scrutiny whatsoever supports a reasonable inference that he has committed fraud here? Basically, Trump gets no benefit of the doubt anymore? I see a very clear rationale for why a businessman would want to manipulate ambiguities in accounting standards to minimize tax liability and optimize financing terms.

[Anonymous]

DP. There's being circumspect and then there's being an ostrich. Trump has acted fraudulently in his charity, in his university, in his casinos, etc.

Why should we presume that these suspicious inconsistencies are merely the result of legitimate accounting errors? Because the fraud in all of his other business dealings were ... no evidence of any sort of pattern of behavior?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:None of this is surprising. Remember reporting about a deposition Trump had to do (don't recall what the litigation was about) where he said he had majority ownership in some enterprise even though he actually had 30% and how his view was totally based on how he personally looked at things. Remember the NYT investigation into Trump family finances where the same property had one value reported to the IRS (typically because it was transferred to kids) and another value--like 10x higher--when it was sold or otherwise valued after the transfer. Or Trump's snits any time Fortune didn't rate his net worth as high as he wanted.

The "two sets of books" is not really what it s about. Shady financial dealings is.

Well, that's fine that we shine a light on Trump's shady dealings. But it does not help this process to make a big deal out of different tax filing vs lender submission figures, and certainly not a conclusion of fraud. This type of analysis makes it all too easy for Trump to dismiss the inquiry as a witch hunt.

This, ironically, is exactly the type of behavior the “Trumpkins” are accused of round these parts.

Personally, I believe that a Trumpkin is someone who will accept any rumor about Hillary as fact, but dismiss fact checks on Trump as politically-biased opinion.

Interesting, but this sort of thing is still very common in the reverse scenario. Politics is tribal...shrug

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am with the cautious and patient accountant here.

Prop Publica's investigation seems to have consisted of showing the documents to "a dozen real estate professionals." Not one appears to have been an accountant. Rather, they all seem to be lawyers, real estate finance professors, and even, for some reason an appraiser/paralegal.

The one accountant quoted appears to have been interviewed by Pro Publica and does not seem to have seen the underlying documents.

Investigating these documents would be a job for a forensic accountant, a somewhat rare specialty among accountants. No accountant I know, and I work closely with a number of accountants, would put any stock whatsoever in this article. It simply is not convincing from an accounting point of view and raises more questions than it answers.

This is not to say there is no fraud as accounting PP keeps insisting to resistant DCUM ears. There may well be, but this article is all innuendo and should not be viewed as based on solid accounting fact finding.

Yes, we are aware that a news article is not a financial statement. But you don't need to be an accountant to recognize that inflating your income for banks while deflating it for the IRS is suspicious. Couple that with Trump's obvious lie that can't release ANY tax returns because he has.been under audit for like the last 50 years and a reasonable person would conclude that he has something to hide. Unless you are an accountant, which apparently prohibits you from observing empty cookie jars without a certified cookie ledger and a memo from the forensics department.

Ha! I would say it is necessary for someone to not be an accountant in order to find this suspicious. Any accountant who has done tax or audit work would not find it inherently suspicious to have different income reported for tax vs business purposes. You literally have to be ignorant on the topic in order to hold the view that the mere existence of different figures is inherently suspicious. Yet somehow in this thread, such ignorance is celebrated and worn as a badge of honor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP. There's being circumspect and then there's being an ostrich. Trump has acted fraudulently in his charity, in his university, in his casinos, etc.

Why should we presume that these suspicious inconsistencies are merely the result of legitimate accounting errors? Because the fraud in all of his other business dealings were ... no evidence of any sort of pattern of behavior?

Gotcha. To clarify, though, these wouldn't be accounting errors, per se. They could be very much intentional and also very much legal. Based on what is in that article, we can't know right now. But the basic point, I guess, is that he deserves no benefit of the doubt anymore at this point. The counterpoint, though, is that you leave openings for Trump to claim victim status and control political narratives when standards for scrutiny are dropped. Just a few days ago ABC news had to apologize for mistakenly showing a 2016 clip from a Kentucky shooting range as footage from the theater of war in Syria. This kind of sloppiness and rush to conclusions just feeds into Trump's game and creates a cloud of suspicion over other good, judicious and thorough work that is being done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:DP. There's being circumspect and then there's being an ostrich. Trump has acted fraudulently in his charity, in his university, in his casinos, etc.

Why should we presume that these suspicious inconsistencies are merely the result of legitimate accounting errors? Because the fraud in all of his other business dealings were ... no evidence of any sort of pattern of behavior?

You are not reading correctly. No one said these are errors. It is absolutely normal for there to be differences in numbers reported for tax versus for business purposes.

We can discover whether these differences are reasonable through an audit, which I am sure Trump has been through many. If he has committed fraud, he can be sued, fined, and/or jailed.

Yet, so far, nothing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. There's being circumspect and then there's being an ostrich. Trump has acted fraudulently in his charity, in his university, in his casinos, etc.

Why should we presume that these suspicious inconsistencies are merely the result of legitimate accounting errors? Because the fraud in all of his other business dealings were ... no evidence of any sort of pattern of behavior?

Gotcha. To clarify, though, these wouldn't be accounting errors, per se. They could be very much intentional and also very much legal. Based on what is in that article, we can't know right now. But the basic point, I guess, is that he deserves no benefit of the doubt anymore at this point. The counterpoint, though, is that you leave openings for Trump to claim victim status and control political narratives when standards for scrutiny are dropped. Just a few days ago ABC news had to apologize for mistakenly showing a 2016 clip from a Kentucky shooting range as footage from the theater of war in Syria. This kind of sloppiness and rush to conclusions just feeds into Trump's game and creates a cloud of suspicion over other good, judicious and thorough work that is being done.

It seems that a lot of tax and loan fraud related to the Trump family had not heretofore been discovered and prosecuted because of the simple fact that no one had looked.

That NYT piece was long, detailed, and described all sorts of crimes that were past the statute of limitations. I commend ProPublica for beginning a similar process with current tax and loan information.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. There's being circumspect and then there's being an ostrich. Trump has acted fraudulently in his charity, in his university, in his casinos, etc.

Why should we presume that these suspicious inconsistencies are merely the result of legitimate accounting errors? Because the fraud in all of his other business dealings were ... no evidence of any sort of pattern of behavior?

Gotcha. To clarify, though, these wouldn't be accounting errors, per se. They could be very much intentional and also very much legal. Based on what is in that article, we can't know right now. But the basic point, I guess, is that he deserves no benefit of the doubt anymore at this point. The counterpoint, though, is that you leave openings for Trump to claim victim status and control political narratives when standards for scrutiny are dropped. Just a few days ago ABC news had to apologize for mistakenly showing a 2016 clip from a Kentucky shooting range as footage from the theater of war in Syria. This kind of sloppiness and rush to conclusions just feeds into Trump's game and creates a cloud of suspicion over other good, judicious and thorough work that is being done.

It seems that a lot of tax and loan fraud related to the Trump family had not heretofore been discovered and prosecuted because of the simple fact that no one had looked.

That NYT piece was long, detailed, and described all sorts of crimes that were past the statute of limitations. I commend ProPublica for beginning a similar process with current tax and loan information.

Isn't this a bit tendentious? If it wasn't prosecuted, then they had no opportunity to defend themselves. I have not read the NYT piece, but will do so. Thnx for flagging.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. There's being circumspect and then there's being an ostrich. Trump has acted fraudulently in his charity, in his university, in his casinos, etc.

Why should we presume that these suspicious inconsistencies are merely the result of legitimate accounting errors? Because the fraud in all of his other business dealings were ... no evidence of any sort of pattern of behavior?

Gotcha. To clarify, though, these wouldn't be accounting errors, per se. They could be very much intentional and also very much legal. Based on what is in that article, we can't know right now. But the basic point, I guess, is that he deserves no benefit of the doubt anymore at this point. The counterpoint, though, is that you leave openings for Trump to claim victim status and control political narratives when standards for scrutiny are dropped. Just a few days ago ABC news had to apologize for mistakenly showing a 2016 clip from a Kentucky shooting range as footage from the theater of war in Syria. This kind of sloppiness and rush to conclusions just feeds into Trump's game and creates a cloud of suspicion over other good, judicious and thorough work that is being done.

It seems that a lot of tax and loan fraud related to the Trump family had not heretofore been discovered and prosecuted because of the simple fact that no one had looked.

That NYT piece was long, detailed, and described all sorts of crimes that were past the statute of limitations. I commend ProPublica for beginning a similar process with current tax and loan information.

Isn't this a bit tendentious? If it wasn't prosecuted, then they had no opportunity to defend themselves. I have not read the NYT piece, but will do so. Thnx for flagging.

Trump’s sister was given a chance to defend herself after a judicial conduct council started an investigation, and she resigned her lifetime appointment as a federal appellate judge instead.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/maryanne-trump-barry-misconduct-inquiry.html

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am with the cautious and patient accountant here.

Prop Publica's investigation seems to have consisted of showing the documents to "a dozen real estate professionals." Not one appears to have been an accountant. Rather, they all seem to be lawyers, real estate finance professors, and even, for some reason an appraiser/paralegal.

The one accountant quoted appears to have been interviewed by Pro Publica and does not seem to have seen the underlying documents.

Investigating these documents would be a job for a forensic accountant, a somewhat rare specialty among accountants. No accountant I know, and I work closely with a number of accountants, would put any stock whatsoever in this article. It simply is not convincing from an accounting point of view and raises more questions than it answers.

This is not to say there is no fraud as accounting PP keeps insisting to resistant DCUM ears. There may well be, but this article is all innuendo and should not be viewed as based on solid accounting fact finding.

Yes, we are aware that a news article is not a financial statement. But you don't need to be an accountant to recognize that inflating your income for banks while deflating it for the IRS is suspicious. Couple that with Trump's obvious lie that can't release ANY tax returns because he has.been under audit for like the last 50 years and a reasonable person would conclude that he has something to hide. Unless you are an accountant, which apparently prohibits you from observing empty cookie jars without a certified cookie ledger and a memo from the forensics department.

Ha! I would say it is necessary for someone to not be an accountant in order to find this suspicious. Any accountant who has done tax or audit work would not find it inherently suspicious to have different income reported for tax vs business purposes. You literally have to be ignorant on the topic in order to hold the view that the mere existence of different figures is inherently suspicious. Yet somehow in this thread, such ignorance is celebrated and worn as a badge of honor.

Ridiculous. Any good accounting analyst starts with a curiosity at least — but really slight suspicion — of GAAP/tax differences and then looks further to verify the reasonableness.

Your schtick here as Mr. Accounting Know-It-All is tiresome.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. There's being circumspect and then there's being an ostrich. Trump has acted fraudulently in his charity, in his university, in his casinos, etc.

Why should we presume that these suspicious inconsistencies are merely the result of legitimate accounting errors? Because the fraud in all of his other business dealings were ... no evidence of any sort of pattern of behavior?

Gotcha. To clarify, though, these wouldn't be accounting errors, per se. They could be very much intentional and also very much legal. Based on what is in that article, we can't know right now. But the basic point, I guess, is that he deserves no benefit of the doubt anymore at this point. The counterpoint, though, is that you leave openings for Trump to claim victim status and control political narratives when standards for scrutiny are dropped. Just a few days ago ABC news had to apologize for mistakenly showing a 2016 clip from a Kentucky shooting range as footage from the theater of war in Syria. This kind of sloppiness and rush to conclusions just feeds into Trump's game and creates a cloud of suspicion over other good, judicious and thorough work that is being done.

It seems that a lot of tax and loan fraud related to the Trump family had not heretofore been discovered and prosecuted because of the simple fact that no one had looked.

That NYT piece was long, detailed, and described all sorts of crimes that were past the statute of limitations. I commend ProPublica for beginning a similar process with current tax and loan information.

Isn't this a bit tendentious? If it wasn't prosecuted, then they had no opportunity to defend themselves. I have not read the NYT piece, but will do so. Thnx for flagging.

Trump’s sister was given a chance to defend herself after a judicial conduct council started an investigation, and she resigned her lifetime appointment as a federal appellate judge instead.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/maryanne-trump-barry-misconduct-inquiry.html

Thanks. I see she's 82. How valuable, really, is a lifetime judicial appointment at that age? Especially when you're already that wealthy. Much better things for her to do without all the drama.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am with the cautious and patient accountant here.

Prop Publica's investigation seems to have consisted of showing the documents to "a dozen real estate professionals." Not one appears to have been an accountant. Rather, they all seem to be lawyers, real estate finance professors, and even, for some reason an appraiser/paralegal.

The one accountant quoted appears to have been interviewed by Pro Publica and does not seem to have seen the underlying documents.

Investigating these documents would be a job for a forensic accountant, a somewhat rare specialty among accountants. No accountant I know, and I work closely with a number of accountants, would put any stock whatsoever in this article. It simply is not convincing from an accounting point of view and raises more questions than it answers.

This is not to say there is no fraud as accounting PP keeps insisting to resistant DCUM ears. There may well be, but this article is all innuendo and should not be viewed as based on solid accounting fact finding.

Yes, we are aware that a news article is not a financial statement. But you don't need to be an accountant to recognize that inflating your income for banks while deflating it for the IRS is suspicious. Couple that with Trump's obvious lie that can't release ANY tax returns because he has.been under audit for like the last 50 years and a reasonable person would conclude that he has something to hide. Unless you are an accountant, which apparently prohibits you from observing empty cookie jars without a certified cookie ledger and a memo from the forensics department.

Ha! I would say it is necessary for someone to not be an accountant in order to find this suspicious. Any accountant who has done tax or audit work would not find it inherently suspicious to have different income reported for tax vs business purposes. You literally have to be ignorant on the topic in order to hold the view that the mere existence of different figures is inherently suspicious. Yet somehow in this thread, such ignorance is celebrated and worn as a badge of honor.

Ridiculous. Any good accounting analyst starts with a curiosity at least — but really slight suspicion — of GAAP/tax differences and then looks further to verify the reasonableness.

Your schtick here as Mr. Accounting Know-It-All is tiresome.

The curiosity may be due to association with Trump, but not the different amounts. No experienced tax/audit accountant finds different tax/GAAP amounts to be inherently curious or suspicious. Would a chef be suspicious about having different kinds of pots and pans to cook different food?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DP. There's being circumspect and then there's being an ostrich. Trump has acted fraudulently in his charity, in his university, in his casinos, etc.

Why should we presume that these suspicious inconsistencies are merely the result of legitimate accounting errors? Because the fraud in all of his other business dealings were ... no evidence of any sort of pattern of behavior?

Gotcha. To clarify, though, these wouldn't be accounting errors, per se. They could be very much intentional and also very much legal. Based on what is in that article, we can't know right now. But the basic point, I guess, is that he deserves no benefit of the doubt anymore at this point. The counterpoint, though, is that you leave openings for Trump to claim victim status and control political narratives when standards for scrutiny are dropped. Just a few days ago ABC news had to apologize for mistakenly showing a 2016 clip from a Kentucky shooting range as footage from the theater of war in Syria. This kind of sloppiness and rush to conclusions just feeds into Trump's game and creates a cloud of suspicion over other good, judicious and thorough work that is being done.

It seems that a lot of tax and loan fraud related to the Trump family had not heretofore been discovered and prosecuted because of the simple fact that no one had looked.

That NYT piece was long, detailed, and described all sorts of crimes that were past the statute of limitations. I commend ProPublica for beginning a similar process with current tax and loan information.

Isn't this a bit tendentious? If it wasn't prosecuted, then they had no opportunity to defend themselves. I have not read the NYT piece, but will do so. Thnx for flagging.

Trump’s sister was given a chance to defend herself after a judicial conduct council started an investigation, and she resigned her lifetime appointment as a federal appellate judge instead.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/maryanne-trump-barry-misconduct-inquiry.html

Thanks. I see she's 82. How valuable, really, is a lifetime judicial appointment at that age? Especially when you're already that wealthy. Much better things for her to do without all the drama.

We see how she values her honor. As much as her brother values his. And no more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am with the cautious and patient accountant here.

Prop Publica's investigation seems to have consisted of showing the documents to "a dozen real estate professionals." Not one appears to have been an accountant. Rather, they all seem to be lawyers, real estate finance professors, and even, for some reason an appraiser/paralegal.

The one accountant quoted appears to have been interviewed by Pro Publica and does not seem to have seen the underlying documents.

Investigating these documents would be a job for a forensic accountant, a somewhat rare specialty among accountants. No accountant I know, and I work closely with a number of accountants, would put any stock whatsoever in this article. It simply is not convincing from an accounting point of view and raises more questions than it answers.

This is not to say there is no fraud as accounting PP keeps insisting to resistant DCUM ears. There may well be, but this article is all innuendo and should not be viewed as based on solid accounting fact finding.

Yes, we are aware that a news article is not a financial statement. But you don't need to be an accountant to recognize that inflating your income for banks while deflating it for the IRS is suspicious. Couple that with Trump's obvious lie that can't release ANY tax returns because he has.been under audit for like the last 50 years and a reasonable person would conclude that he has something to hide. Unless you are an accountant, which apparently prohibits you from observing empty cookie jars without a certified cookie ledger and a memo from the forensics department.

Ha! I would say it is necessary for someone to not be an accountant in order to find this suspicious. Any accountant who has done tax or audit work would not find it inherently suspicious to have different income reported for tax vs business purposes. You literally have to be ignorant on the topic in order to hold the view that the mere existence of different figures is inherently suspicious. Yet somehow in this thread, such ignorance is celebrated and worn as a badge of honor.

Ridiculous. Any good accounting analyst starts with a curiosity at least — but really slight suspicion — of GAAP/tax differences and then looks further to verify the reasonableness.

Your schtick here as Mr. Accounting Know-It-All is tiresome.

The curiosity may be due to association with Trump, but not the different amounts. No experienced tax/audit accountant finds different tax/GAAP amounts to be inherently curious or suspicious. Would a chef be suspicious about having different kinds of pots and pans to cook different food?

Sorry bud. I trust the experts in the ProPublica article over an anonymous DCUM poster.