Matt Levine, Columnist

Fred Trump's Tax Scheme Was Quite Impressive

For sheer brazenness, it would be hard to beat.

October 3, 2018 at 7:07 PM UTC

Matt Levine is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former investment banker at Goldman Sachs, he was a mergers and acquisitions lawyer at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz; a clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit; and an editor of Dealbreaker.

A new standard for chutzpah.
Photographer: New York Post Archives

Provide news feedback or report an error

Site feedback:

Take our Survey

This post originally appeared in Money Stuff.

I can’t say I’m surprised that Donald Trump got orders of magnitude more money from his father than he has claimed to, or that he minimized taxes on that money through an assortment of legal, semi-legal and illegal means, but it is impressive that the New York Times has him so comprehensively dead to rights. And I am a bit surprised by the variety and brazenness of the tax machinations. For instance: