How Trump scored a big tax break for conserving a golf range
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/special-report-how-trump-scored-big-tax-break-conserving-golf-range-2021-04-30/
When Donald Trump bought his seaside golf course in a wealthy Los Angeles suburb in 2002, he vowed to surround it with “some of the most beautiful houses in California.” But the 261-acre property on the Palos Verdes Peninsula had a problem.
Geologists working for the city would not clear part of it for home-building because of unstable soil underlying the course, built on a landslide-prone bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.
The denials infuriated Trump, who lobbied and litigated for eight years in a failed effort to reverse the geologists’ findings and secure development approvals, according to interviews with planners and geologists and a Reuters review of public records and court filings.
Trump eventually abandoned a plan to build 16 homes and turned instead to the tax code to offset the lost profits -
securing a $25 million tax deduction in exchange for a promise not to develop the land. The agreement with a nonprofit conservancy allowed him to continue using the land as a driving range for the Trump National Golf Course.
More at link...
Note: trump previously won fight to reduce property taxes on this land tract based on a $1.1m assessment value to a $900k value! And then he took a $25 million charitable break on it.
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