Tax Rep Said Trump ‘Agrees’ Mar a Lago Is Worth $26 6 Million
  • 7 months ago
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Tax Rep Said Trump ‘Agrees’ Mar-a-Lago Is Worth $26.6 Million.
Former President Donald Trump has sought to discredit a New York judge’s blockbuster ruling threatening his business empire by arguing that Mar-a-Lago alone is worth more than a billion dollars.

But less than three years ago, his tax representative told Palm Beach County officials that Trump “agrees” his private club in South Florida is worth just $26.6 million, according to records obtained by The Messenger.

“The petitioner agrees with the determination of the property appraiser or tax collector,” Michael Corbiciero, the CEO of the tax consulting firm Marvin F. Poer & Co., attested in a letter dated Nov. 16, 2020.

If Mar-a-Lago were a private residence, Palm Beach County real estate insiders broadly agree that it would fetch far higher than its government valuations. But Trump forfeited certain uses under the terms of deeds that he signed in 1995 and later. The former president argues that it effectively is a private residence because he now lives there, but he has benefited from the tax incentives of keeping it as a social club.

Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron cited the wide gulf between Palm Beach County Appraiser’s valuations of Mar-a-Lago and the valuations assigned to them on Trump’s statements of financial condition in part to find the former president liable for fraud. The judge ordered the dissolution of the key New York companies behind Trump’s financial empire.

Trump has made Mar-a-Lago’s value a key focus of his attack on the judge’s ruling, but his portrayal of the court’s findings about the property is misleading.

Engoron didn’t assess Mar-a-Lago’s value. The judge cited a valuation by the Palm Beach County Appraiser — from 2011. That appraiser’s valuations incrementally rose every year until it reached $28 million about a decade later.

The Palm Beach County Appraiser’s valuations base their estimates on Trump’s deed restricting its use as a social club. Trump agreed to “forever extinguish” his right to “develop or use the Property for any purpose other than club use,” in return for tax benefits, but in his statements of financial condition to banks and insurers, Trump treated Mar-a-Lago as a private residence to justify estimates in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Trump’s lawyers argue that’s true because Mar-a-Lago has become the former president’s home, and they note that government valuations for income-based appraisals are different from market values.

Despite his public rhetoric about Mar-a-Lago’s sky-high value — and the fact that many insiders in Palm Beach’s real estate community agree with him — the newly released documents show Trump in agreement with the price, at least for
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