
Ivylise Simones
Until the election, we’re bringing you “The Trump Files,” a daily dose of telling episodes, strange but true stories, or curious scenes from the life of GOP nominee Donald Trump.
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 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. 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 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.
“Trump leveraged tax forgiveness and clout into a deal where he had essentially no risk at all; there was no downside,” Burstein told the Los Angeles Times in 2011. “Then, having triumphed, he repaid his benefactors by excoriating them as inept, venal and useless.”
Trump sold his stake in the hotel in 1996, but the tax abatement is still in effect. While the city initially said it would cost it about $4 million a year, or about $160 million in lost revenue over its lifetime, it’s ended up being even costlier. According to the New York Times, the tax break has cost the city almost $360 million so far—and there are still four years left on the deal.
Read the rest of “The Trump Files”:
- Trump Files #1: The Time Andrew Dice Clay Thanked Donald for the Hookers
- Trump Files #2: When Donald Tried to Stop Charlie Sheen’s Marriage to Brooke Mueller
- Trump Files #3: The Brief Life of the “Trump Chateau for the Indigent”
- Trump Files #4: Donald Thinks Asbestos Fears Are a Mob Conspiracy
- Trump Files #5: Donald’s Nuclear Negotiating Fantasy
- Trump Files #6: Donald Wants a Powerball for Spies
- Trump Files #7: Donald Gets An Allowance
- Trump Files #8: The Time He Went Bananas on a Water Cooler
- Trump Files #9: The Great Geico Boycott
- Trump Files #10: Donald Trump, Tax-Hike Crusader
- Trump Files #11: Watch Donald Trump Say He Would Have Done Better as a Black Man
- Trump Files #12: Donald Can’t Multiply 17 and 6
- Trump Files #13: Watch Donald Sing the “Green Acres” Theme Song in Overalls
- Trump Files #14: The Time Donald Trump Pulled Over His Limo to Stop a Beating
- Trump Files #15: When Donald Wanted to Help the Clintons Buy Their House
- Trump Files #16: He Once Forced a Small Business to Pay Him Royalties for Using the Word “Trump”
- Trump Files #17: He Dumped Wine on an “Unattractive Reporter”
- Trump Files #18: Behold the Hideous Statue He Wanted to Erect In Manhattan
- Trump Files #19: When Donald Was “Principal for a Day” and Confronted by a Fifth-Grader
- Trump Files #20: In 2012, Trump Begged GOP Presidential Candidates to Be Civil
- Trump Files #21: When Donald Couldn’t Tell the Difference Between Gorbachev and an Impersonator
- Trump Files #22: His Football Team Treated Its Cheerleaders “Like Hookers”
- Trump Files #23: Donald Tried to Shut Down a Bike Race Named “Rump”
- Trump Files #24: When Donald Called Out Pat Buchanan for Bigotry
- Trump Files #25: Donald’s Most Ridiculous Appearance on Howard Stern’s Show
- Trump Files #26: How Donald Tricked New York Into Giving Him His First Huge Deal
- Trump Files #27: Donald Told Congress the Reagan Tax Cuts Were Terrible
- Trump Files #28: When Donald Destroyed Historic Art to Build Trump Tower
- Trump Files #29: Donald Wanted to Build an Insane Castle on Madison Avenue
- Trump Files #30: Donald’s Near-Death Experience (That He Invented)
- Trump Files #31: When Donald Struck Oil on the Upper West Side
- Trump Files #32: When Donald Massacred Trees in the Trump Tower Lobby
- Trump Files #33: When Donald Demanded Other People Pay for His Overpriced Quarterback
- Trump Files #34: The Time Donald Sued Someone Who Made Fun of Him for $500 Million
- Trump Files #35: Donald Tried to Make His Ghostwriter Pay for His Book Party
- Trump Files #36: Watch Donald Shave a Man’s Head on Television
- Trump Files #37: How Donald Helped Make It Harder to Get Football Tickets
- Trump Files #38: Donald Was Curious About His Baby Daughter’s Breasts
- Trump Files #39: When Democrats Courted Donald
- Trump Files #40: Watch the Trump Vodka Ad Designed for a Russian Audience
- Trump Files #41: Donald’s Cologne Smelled of Jamba Juice and Strip Clubs
- Trump Files #42: Donald Sued Other People Named Trump for Using Their Own Name
- Trump Files #43: Donald Thinks Asbestos Would Have Saved the Twin Towers
- Trump Files #44: Why Donald Threw a Fit Over His “Trump Tree” in Central Park
- Trump Files #45: Watch Trump Endorse Slim Shady for President
- Trump Files #46: The Easiest 13 Cents He Ever Made
- Trump Files #47: The Time Donald Burned a Widow’s Mortgage
- Trump Files #48: Donald’s Recurring Sex Dreams
- Trump Files #49: Trump’s Epic Insult Fight With Ed Koch
- Trump Files #50: Donald Has Some Advice for Citizen Kane
- Trump Files #51: Donald Once Turned Down a Million-Dollar Bet on “Trump: The Game”
- Trump Files #52: When Donald Tried to Shake Down Mike Tyson for $2 Million
- Trump Files #53: Donald and Melania’s Creepy, Sex-Filled Interview With Howard Stern
- Trump Files #54: Donald’s Mega-Yacht Wasn’t Big Enough For Him
- Trump Files #55: When Donald Got in a Fight With Martha Stewart
- Trump Files #56: Donald Reenacts an Iconic Scene From Top Gun
- Trump Files #57: How Donald Tried to Hide His Legal Troubles to Get His Casino Approved
- Trump Files #58: Donald’s Wall Street Tower Is Filled With Crooks
- Trump Files #59: When Donald Took Revenge by Cutting Off Health Coverage for a Sick Infant
- Trump Files #60: Donald Couldn’t Name Any of His “Handpicked” Trump U Professors
- Trump Files #61: Watch a Clip of the Awful TV Show Trump Wanted to Make About Himself
- Trump Files #62: Donald Perfectly Explains Why He Doesn’t Have a Presidential Temperament
- Trump Files #63: Donald’s Petty Revenge on Connie Chung
- Trump Files #64: Why Donald Called His 4-Year-Old Son a “Loser”
- Trump Files #65: The Time Donald Called Some of His Golf Club Members “Spoiled Rich Jewish Guys”
- Trump Files #66: “Always Be Around Unsuccessful People,” Donald Recommends
- Trump Files #67: Donald Said His Life Was “Shit.” Here’s Why.
- Trump Files #68: Donald Filmed a Music Video. It Didn’t Go Well.
- Trump Files #69: Donald Claimed “More Indian Blood” Than the Native Americans Competing With His Casinos
- Trump Files #70: Donald Has Been Inflating His Net Worth for 40 Years
- Trump Files #71: Donald Weighs In on “Ghetto Supastar”
- Trump Files #72: The Deadly Powerboat Race Donald Hosted in Atlantic City
- Trump Files #73: When Donald Fat-Shamed Miss Universe
- Trump Files #74: Yet Another Time Donald Sued Over the Word “Trump”
- Trump Files #75: Donald Thinks Exercising Might Kill You
- Trump Files #76: Donald’s Big Book of Hitler Speeches
- Trump Files #77: When Donald Ran Afoul of Ancient Scottish Heraldry Law
- Trump Files #78: Donald Accuses a Whiskey Company of Election Fraud
- Trump Files #79: When Donald’s Anti-Japanese Comments Came Back to Haunt Him
- Trump Files #80: The Shady Way Fred Trump Tried to Save His Son’s Casino
- Trump Files #81: Donald’s Creepy Poolside Parties in Florida
- Trump Files #82: Donald Gives a Lesson in How Not to Ski With Your Kids
- Trump Files #83: Listen to Donald Brag About His Affairs—While Pretending to Be Someone Else
- Trump Files #84: How Donald Made a Fortune by Dumping His Debt on Other People
- Trump Files #85: When Donald Bought a Nightclub From an Infamous Mobster
- Trump Files #86: Donald Sues Himself—And Wins!
- Trump Files #87: Donald’s War on His Scottish Neighbors
- Trump Files #88: When Donald Had to Prove He Was Not the Son of an Orangutan
- Trump Files #89: There Once Was a Horse Named DJ Trump
- Trump Files #90: How Donald’s Lawyers Dealt With His Constant Lying
- Trump Files #91: Donald Flipped Out When an Analyst (Correctly) Predicted His Casino’s Failure
- Trump Files #92: Cosmo Once Asked Donald to Pose Nude for $50,000
- Trump Files #93: Donald Attacks a Reporter Who Questioned His Claim to Own the Empire State Building
- Trump Files #94: Famous Tic Tac Gobbler Donald Trump Had This Breath Advice for Larry King
- Trump Files #95: Trump Finds the Silver Lining in an Ebola Outbreak