Opinion: The biggest lesson from Michael Cohen’s explosive testimony
By Catherine Rampell Catherine Rampell Columnist covering economics, public policy, politics and culture Email Bio Follow Columnist February 28 at 6:07 PM There were lots of takeaways from Michael Cohen’s explosive congressional testimony this week: about Russia, racism, redemption.
We heard, for instance, Cohen’s story about how the president used the Trump Foundation, supposedly a charitable organization, as his personal piggy bank. Having payment for a service made to a foundation rather than to the provider of the service, apparently to allow the provider to evade taxes, “seems like outright tax fraud,” said University of California at Irvine law professor Omri Marian.
Cohen again: “When telling me in 2008 or 2009 that he was cutting employee salaries in half, including mine, he showed me what he claimed was a $10 million IRS tax refund, and he said that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving ‘someone like him’ that much money back.” If true, that statement would undercut Trump’s sorry excuse for not releasing his returns . But it would also reflect a grim reality: IRS enforcement activity has indeed loosened over the years, especially when it comes to the ultra-wealthy.
Federal criminal prosecutions referred by the Internal Revenue Service per 1 million population. Source: Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Tax cheating by the wealthy is not costless. When they shirk, it just means law-abiding suckers — a.k.a. Leona Helmsley’s “little people” — have to pay more to make up for the shortfall.
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