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1970s: Trump builds Grand Hyatt w/ tax break from Manhattan, then screws Manhattan. USA!
When Donald made his first huge splash by building the Grand Hyatt hotel in Midtown Manhattan in the late 1970s, he did so on the back of an enormous, unprecedented tax break from the city. Trump, through his big-donor father, had close ties to then-Mayor Abe Beame (D). "Whatever my friends Fred and Donald want in this town, they get," Beame once told the man who sold the hotel site to Trump. What Trump wanted, and got, was a deal in which a tax-exempt city agency bought the site of the hotel, leased it back to Trump for $1 a year, and spared him from paying property taxes for 40 years.
The massive tax abatement angered other developers, so the city made Trump agree to give back some of his profits each year as a rent payment. But when the Grand Hyatt became a success, the hotel to cooked the books so it could pay the city less.
In 1986, according to CBS News, the Grand Hyatt had its best year ever. After getting $3.7 million from the hotel in 1985, city officials expected an even larger payment the next year after the record profits. Instead, Trump ordered the Grant Hyatt to change its accounting methods to lower its reported profits. Despite its banner year, the hotel paid the city just $667,000.
Karen Burstein, the city's auditor general, investigated the hotel's accounting practices and called them "aberrant and distortive" in a 1989 report. Experts who reviewed the report for CBS News said that it "detailed failures in basic bookkeeping, the seemingly sudden adoption of irregular accounting methods, and efforts to stymie officials." That included being unable to find many of the hotel's ledgers and other financial paperwork, which Burstein called "just inexcusable." She concluded that Trump owed the city $2.9 million as a result of his maneuvers, but it doesn't appear to have gotten the money back. The New York Times reported last month that the city may have recovered only $850,000 from Trump in a 2004 settlement.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/trump-files-how-donald-screwed-over-new-york-city-his-tax-bill
The massive tax abatement angered other developers, so the city made Trump agree to give back some of his profits each year as a rent payment. But when the Grand Hyatt became a success, the hotel to cooked the books so it could pay the city less.
In 1986, according to CBS News, the Grand Hyatt had its best year ever. After getting $3.7 million from the hotel in 1985, city officials expected an even larger payment the next year after the record profits. Instead, Trump ordered the Grant Hyatt to change its accounting methods to lower its reported profits. Despite its banner year, the hotel paid the city just $667,000.
Karen Burstein, the city's auditor general, investigated the hotel's accounting practices and called them "aberrant and distortive" in a 1989 report. Experts who reviewed the report for CBS News said that it "detailed failures in basic bookkeeping, the seemingly sudden adoption of irregular accounting methods, and efforts to stymie officials." That included being unable to find many of the hotel's ledgers and other financial paperwork, which Burstein called "just inexcusable." She concluded that Trump owed the city $2.9 million as a result of his maneuvers, but it doesn't appear to have gotten the money back. The New York Times reported last month that the city may have recovered only $850,000 from Trump in a 2004 settlement.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/trump-files-how-donald-screwed-over-new-york-city-his-tax-bill
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