Almost a month ago, I brought you the news that – rather bizarrely for a purported billionaire – Trump receives a tax credit in New York which is restricted to married couples making less than $500k a year. The news is based on the on-going reporting of Aaron Elstein of Crain’s New York Business. Trump’s folks insisted it was a mistake and said, well of course Trump’s makes more than a half million dollars a year. But now Elstein reports that Trump got the deduction again this year? Brand new documents!
As I said, after the last time, Trump’s folks said it was all a bureaucratic mistake on the city’s part. City officials also said Trump shouldn’t have gotten the tax break. But they quite clearly did not say it was because his income is too high. There were other problems with Trump’s application for the credit.
The key point is that the application for this tax credit isn’t simply taken on faith. Even if this is just some bureaucratic snafu moving forward on auto-pilot in the city’s property tax department, the city cross references all applications with state records where Trump’s adjusted gross income is on file.
We can’t know definitively what Trump’s tax returns say because he’s broken all precedent by refusing to release them for the duration of the campaign. But the fact that he got this credit YET AGAIN strongly suggests that records on file with the state of New York show Trump makes less than $500k. It could all be a snafu, sure. But this snafu seems pretty hard to stamp out. And again, the city says it verifies every applicant’s income with the state EVERY YEAR.
No wonder Trump is still holding out hope Republican high-rollers will eventually reimburse him for the primary campaign.
