The Atlantic

Trump’s Shady Accounting Playbook for the Hyper-rich

A sweeping <em>New York Times </em>investigation shows the legal and legally questionable maneuvers President Trump used to accumulate his wealth.
Source: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters

Wealth begets wealth, and the wealthy are remarkably adept at figuring out how to get wealthier. That is one takeaway from The New York Timesmammoth investigation into the Trump family’s gymnastic accounting prowess, based on reams of tax returns and corporate documents. The family used perfectly legal and more questionable tax-avoidance strategies to bolster its net worth, the investigation by David Barstow, Susanne Craig, and Russ Buettner found, and also committed “outright fraud.”   

As a result, hundreds of millions of dollars passed from one generation to another scarcely

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