The Trump family motto might as well be, “the family that grifts together, stays together.” And Ivanka Trump, who is just as shady at business as her father, apparently also loves helping her daddy avoid paying taxes.
The New York Times investigation that meticulously detailed how Donald Trump has avoided paying federal income taxes for years uncovered that one of the many, many ways he engaged in some creative accounting was by writing off mysterious “consulting fees.” And at least some of that money went straight to Ivanka, who somehow was both an executive and a consultant at the Trump Organization at the time. From the New York Times, emphasis my own:
Rather, there appears to be a closer-to-home explanation for at least some of the fees: Mr. Trump reduced his taxable income by treating a family member as a consultant, and then deducting the fee as a cost of doing business.
The “consultants” are not identified in the tax records. But evidence of this arrangement was gleaned by comparing the confidential tax records to the financial disclosures Ivanka Trump filed when she joined the White House staff in 2017. Ms. Trump reported receiving payments from a consulting company she co-owned, totaling $747,622, that exactly matched consulting fees claimed as tax deductions by the Trump Organization for hotel projects in Vancouver and Hawaii.
Ms. Trump had been an executive officer of the Trump companies that received profits from and paid the consulting fees for both projects — meaning she appears to have been treated as a consultant on the same hotel deals that she helped manage as part of her job at her father’s business.
As the Times goes on to note, this strange “consulting fee” is also possible a “way to transfer assets to his children without incurring a gift tax.”
What an incredible father-daughter bonding experience that must have been.