President Donald Trump committed "instances of outright fraud" as he helped his parents dodge taxes and boost the money he got from them, according to a detailed New York Times investigation published Tuesday. The president received today's equivalent of $413 million from the real estate holdings of his father, Fred Trump, the newspaper reported, citing a "vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records." The findings contrast with the story Trump has always told about himself – that he built up wealth and success after only getting a small loan from his father. Trump and his siblings in part "set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents," according to the Times. The article notes that tax experts say the president would be unlikely to face criminal charges related to the conduct because of how much time has passed since much of it took place in the 1990s.<doc-sep>In an exhaustive deep dive into the finances of Donald Trump, and his real estate mogul father Fred, the New York Times details a pattern of tax avoidance and parental gifts that created the US president’s business empire. Among other things, the Trump family created many wealth transfer mechanisms of questionable legality. These include making loans that were never paid back, paying the Trump kids through shell corporations and apparently underreporting the value of Fred Trump’s assets, the Times reports. Underreporting value meant the taxes the Trumps paid would be artificially discounted when transferred to the next generation. These maneuvers met with little resistance from the Internal Revenue Service, The Times found. The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances. The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show. Trump has never disclosed his own tax returns. The Times report draws on the tax returns of his father, Fred, and covers decades before Donald Trump ever considered running for president. A lawyer for the president said that the report was “100 percent false, and highly defamatory.”<doc-sep>The Failing New York Times did something I have never seen done before. They used the concept of “time value of money” in doing a very old, boring and often told hit piece on me. Added up, this means that 97% of their stories on me are bad. Never recovered from bad election call!<doc-sep>(CNN) — President Donald Trump helped “his parents dodge taxes” in the 1990s, including “instances of outright fraud” that allowed him to amass a fortune from them, according to an analysis Tuesday from The New York Times. Trump received at least $413 million in today’s dollars from his father’s real estate empire, starting at the age of 3. The President and his siblings helped his parents build their wealth by hiding millions of dollars in gifts in a “sham corporation,” according to the Times. The President assisted his father in taking “improper tax deductions worth millions more.” He also helped to “formulate a strategy” for his parents to undervalue their real estate holdings on their tax returns to reduce their tax bill, according to records reviewed by the Times. Over a months-long investigation, the Times reviewed more than 100,000 pages of financial documents – bank statements, financial audits, cash disbursement reports and canceled checks. They included more than 200 tax returns from Fred C. Trump, the President’s father, and other family partnerships and trusts. The Times also interviewed some of the President’s father’s former employees and advisers. Trump dismissed the report in a tweet on Wednesday as a “very old, boring and often told hit piece,” though he did not directly dispute any of its findings. Trump’s lawyer Charles Harder responded to the Times story in a statement on Monday. “The New York Times’ allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” Harder said, according to the paper. “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which the Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate,” the statement continued. Trump’s brother Robert Trump said in a statement to the Times that all “required taxes were paid.” “Our dear father, Fred C. Trump, passed away in June 1999. Our beloved mother, Mary Anne Trump, passed away in August 2000,” Robert Trump said in the statement to The Times. “All appropriate gift and estate tax returns were filed, and the required taxes were paid. Our father’s estate was closed in 2001 by both the Internal Revenue Service and the New York State tax authorities, and our mother’s estate was closed in 2004. Our family has no other comment on these matters that happened some 20 years ago, and would appreciate your respecting the privacy of our deceased parents, may God rest their souls.” “Fred Trump has been gone for nearly twenty years and it’s sad to witness this misleading attack against the Trump family by the failing New York Times,” said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders in a statement Tuesday. “Many decades ago the IRS reviewed and signed off on these transactions.” The records reviewed by the Times did not include Trump’s personal tax returns or his recent business dealings. Trump’s taxes have been largely a mystery since he first ran for office. During the campaign, the then-candidate broke with presidential election norms and refused to produce his tax returns for public review. They have remained private since he took office, and Trump has repeatedly said he’s under audit by the IRS, which has been ongoing since at least 2016, according to the President. Being under audit by the IRS does not preclude someone from releasing their tax returns publicly. Though Trump has not released his returns, the Times story offers the “first public accounting” of the income the President has received over decades from his family’s businesses. James Gazzale, a spokesman for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, said in a statement that the agency “is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation.” The Times report also offers a far different portrayal of how the President has gained his wealth, after decades of depicting himself as a self-made man. He began earning money from his father when he was a toddler, and after college graduation his father gave him the equivalent of $1 million a year. By the time he was in his 40s and 50s, the yearly sum was more than $5 million, the Times reported. Trump’s father was “relentless and creative” in finding ways to funnel wealth to his children, according to the Times. Trump was on his father’s payroll for multiple positions. Loan after loan was provided and often was never repaid. Trump got money for his car, money to buy stocks and his first Manhattan office. He was even given $10,000 Christmas checks, according to the Times. “Evading gift and estate taxes became a family affair” when Trump’s father was diagnosed with dementia in his 80s, according to interviews and documents obtained by the Times. One previously unknown event uncovered by the Times shows how Trump and his siblings were able to gain ownership of most of his father’s businesses on Nov. 22, 1997, a year and half before his father’s passing. To do so, they used a special type of trust called GRAT, short for grantor-retained annuity trust. Those kinds of trusts help to pass wealth like stocks, real estate and art collections from one generation to the next without paying any estate taxes. For the Trumps, that meant putting half their properties into the trust under Trump’s father’s name and the other half into his wife’s name, according to the Times. Then Trump’s parents gave their children roughly two-thirds of their assets in the trust. Trump and his siblings bought the remaining third by making annuity payments to their parents for two years. Once it was done, Trump and his siblings owned nearly all of his father’s empire “free and clear of estate taxes,” according to the Times. Trump and his siblings also lowered the value of their father’s real estate holdings to $41.4 million, dodging hundreds of millions in gift taxes, according to the Times. Over the next decade, the same set of buildings would be sold for “more than 16 times the amount,” according to the Times. Still, the biggest payday Trump ever got from his father came after his death, on May 4, 2004.<doc-sep>
Representatives from the White House and the Trump Organization did not return requests for comment. "The Tax Department is reviewing the allegations in the NYT article and is vigorously pursuing all appropriate avenues of investigation," a spokesman from the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance said in an email to CNBC. The Times reported on Tuesday that Trump and his family committed "instances of outright fraud" in order to transfer millions of dollars from the real estate empire of the president's father, Fred Trump, to his children without paying the appropriate taxes. New York state tax officials are investigating allegations detailed in an exhaustive New York Times investigation into Donald Trump and his family's business dealings. In a statement to the Times, Trump lawyer Charles Harder denied any allegations of fraud and tax evasion, saying "the facts upon which The Times bases its allegations are extremely inaccurate." White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, in her response to the Times, backed up Trump's claims about his wealth, repeating the story that he took a $1 million loan from his father and paid it back. Trump said numerous times as a presidential candidate that he had received the "very small" $1 million loan from his father. But the newspaper's investigation found that Trump had actually been lent at least $60.7 million. The article claims the Trump family committed "instances of outright fraud," with the president himself receiving today's equivalent of $413 million from the real estate holdings of his father, the Times reported while citing 100,000 documents and interviews with former family associates. Meanwhile, the state tax department already is investigating the president's charity, the Trump Foundation. The president's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has also been caught up in the tax department probe as he was subpoenaed by investigators in August,. The probe came on the heels of a lawsuit by New York state Attorney General Barbara Underwood against the foundation, as well as Trump himself, claiming that he broke state and federal law by mismanaging the charity. The state attorney general's office declined to comment. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat who is one of Trump's most vocal critics, tweeted Tuesday night that he would direct the city's finance department to look into the claims made in the Times investigation. BDB tweet WATCH: Trump's 'suspect tax schemes' in focus