President Cheap N Cheaty Ain't Wanna Pay His Golf Course Taxes, You Are So Surprised

What about the taxes on Hillary's golf course, huh?

Donald Trump is doing the deadbeat two-step again, suing Palm Beach County over the valuation of Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida. The county appraiser's office says it's worth around $20 million, and billed Trump for $398,315. Trump's Florida-based attorney sued to dispute that valuation, but sent along a wire transfer for $296,595.01, reflecting a "good faith estimate" of the property's real value, which would work out to about $15 million.

And here's the punchline: In Trump's 2016 and 2017 financial disclosures, the Jupiter golf club is valued at "over $50 million." So when Donald Trump wants to say he's a rich guy, Trump National is worth a bundle. When it's time to pay taxes on it, it's suddenly worth tens of millions less.

The Palm Beach Post reports this is the fifth consecutive year Trump has disputed his property taxes on the golf course. Well, of course it is! You don't become a billionaire by just paying the tax bill the county sends you, after all. You become a "billionaire" by disputing every last tax charge, refusing to pay people you've hired, and vastly overstating your actual net worth.

Oh, and it also helps if you can bill the Secret Service top dollar for golf cart rentals to protect you while you visit your own golf course. One of which you go to every damn weekend. It's all Obama's fault anyway -- if he hadn't spent so much time golfing, then Trump wouldn't have such a big backlog of tweets complaining about Obama golfing too much, and people wouldn't have any record to drag up when pointing out how much Trump golfs.

Damn you, Barack Obama. Without Obama for comparison, we'd be left trying to compare Trump's golf outings to Eisenhower's, which wouldn't even be interesting since Ike didn't even have a Twitter account.

Trump's appeals of his Palm Beach property taxes have a mixed record; the Palm Beach Post says two of the last four appeals were rejected by judges. Back in 2014, Trump also tried to escape the County's valuation of $11.5 million, claiming the place was only worth $5 million. That was the price he originally paid for it in 2012. You might think he'd be satisfied the county only thinks Trump National was worth $18.4 million last year, since, as the Associated Press points out, if he paid tax on the $50 million value he claimed in his financial disclosures, the tab would come to over a million bucks.

David Cay Johnston, who's made a specialty of trying to decipher Trump's finances, said in an email to the Palm Beach Post that Trump's attempted weaseling out of paying $100,000 in property taxes was "unseemly," a pretty diplomatic way of putting it. He added,

Trump tells voters his properties are hugely valuable but claims they are worth far far less for property tax purposes, which unfairly shifts to others the burdens of government.

Oh, yeah, about that burden of government: Between the inauguration and September of last year, law enforcement agencies in Palm Beach County spent an additional $3.4 million on overtime and other costs of helping the Secret Service with security for Trump's many visits. But really, that has nothing to do with his not wanting to pay local taxes, because the county was reimbursed for all those extra costs by the federal government. Surely it would be Fake News of the most biased, unfair sort to suggest Trump is just a cheapskate who lies about what a YOOOGE rich guy he is, but isn't willing to pay even the minimal costs of being a citizen.

We feel right bad about that, we sure do.

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[ Palm Beach Post / Chicago Tribune / Sun Sentinel ]