Tax avoidance/evasion

The 2024 Corporate Rap Sheet

My colleagues and I collected more than 22,000 new entries for the U.S. version of Violation Tracker this year. We also launched Violation Tracker Global, which contains cases brought against large corporations in 52 countries. Here are some of the most notable cases of the year from both databases.

McKinsey and Opioids. McKinsey, the leading management consulting firm, had to pay $650 million in criminal and civil penalties to resolve a U.S. Justice Department (DOJ) case concerning its work for the disgraced pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma. McKinsey was charged with conspiring with Purdue to “turbocharge” sales of OxyContin while misleading users about the addiction risks of the opioid.

TD Bank and Money Laundering. TD Bank N.A., a U.S. subsidiary of Canada’s Toronto-Dominion, pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $1.9 billion in fines and forfeiture to resolve DOJ charges that it violated the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to file reports on suspicious transactions and thereby facilitated money laundering by criminal networks.

BHP, Vale and a Mining Disaster. Mining giants BHP and Vale, co-owners of the Samarco joint venture, agreed to a US$31 billion settlement to resolve litigation brought by Brazilian communities destroyed by the 2015 Mariana mine-waste dam collapse that killed 19 people and polluted 400 miles of rivers.

Raytheon and Fraud and Bribery. Raytheon Company, a subsidiary of military contractor RTX (formerly known as Raytheon Technologies), agreed to pay over $950 million to resolve a DOJ criminal investigation into a major fraud scheme involving defective pricing on certain government contracts and violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the Arms Export Control Act.

3M and PFAS. A federal judge in South Carolina gave final approval to a class action settlement in which 3M agreed to pay an estimated $12.5 billion to more than 10,000 public water systems to resolve allegations that PFAS chemicals produced by the company for use in firefighting foam ended up contaminating water sources.

Apple and Improper Tax Breaks. The European Commission ordered Apple to repay 13 billion euros to Ireland after determining that the special tax breaks the company had been receiving for 16 years amounted to a form of illegitimate state aid.

Meta Platforms and Biometric Data. Facebook parent Meta Platforms agreed to pay $1.4 billion to the Texas Attorney General’s office to settle a lawsuit alleging it improperly captured biometric data from millions of users for its facial recognition system without the authorization required by state law.

Teva Pharmaceuticals and Copaxone. The European Commission fined Teva 462 million euros for abusing its dominant position to delay competition to Copaxone, its medication for the treatment of multiple sclerosis. The Commission found that Teva artificially extended the patent protection of Copaxone and systematically spread misleading information about a competing product to hinder its market entry and uptake.

Uber Technologies and Wage Theft. Uber paid $148 million to settle a case brought by the Massachusetts Attorney General alleging that it violated state wage and hour law in the way it paid its drivers. The agreement also required the company to begin paying a minimum wage of $32.50 an hour and providing benefits such as paid sick leave. The case also targeted Lyft, which paid $27 million.

Glencore and Bribery. The Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland ordered commodities trading company Glencore to pay a penalty equal to about $152 million for failing to take steps to prevent the bribery of government officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo by a business partner.

Walgreens and False Claims. Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and Walgreen Co. agreed to pay $106 million to the DOJ to resolve alleged violations of the False Claims Act and state statutes for billing government health care programs for prescriptions never dispensed.

Veolia and a Workplace Death. A British subsidiary of France’s Veolia Group pleaded guilty to breaching the Health and Safety at Work Act after a worker died and another was seriously injured while decommissioning a North Sea gas rig. The Health and Safety Executive fined the company £3 million and ordered it to pay £60,000 in costs.

Goldman Sachs and Apple Card Users. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ordered Goldman Sachs to pay $64 million in fines and redress for mishandling customer service breakdowns affecting thousands of Apple Card holders. These failures meant that consumers faced long waits to get money back for disputed charges and some had incorrect negative information added to their credit reports.

You can find many more examples of the year’s corporate scandals in Violation Tracker and Violation Tracker Global. There is every reason to believe there will be many more cases for the Trackers to document in the coming year.

Apple Loses Its Sweet Irish Tax Deal

When governments in the United States decide to give special tax breaks to large corporations, the sky is the limit and no one can challenge that largesse. As Apple just learned to the tune of about $14 billion, things are different in the European Union.

The EU is much stricter about the tax benefits and other forms of financial assistance that can be given to companies. What is called state aid is not banned entirely, but it is supposed to be used only when it is “exceptionally justified” and does not distort competition.

Moreover, the European Commission can bring legal action when it believes that a member state has awarded state aid improperly, with the remedy being that the company has to give back the money.

Some state and local governments in the U.S. use procedures know as clawbacks to recover economic development assistance from companies that fail to meet job-creation or other promises they made to receive aid. The European Commission cases, by contrast, are not related to company performance but are instead based on an argument that the aid was illegitimate to begin with.

EU member states are supposed to get prior approval for state aid awards. Yet they often adopt practices, especially with regard to taxes, that the Commission may later decide constitute improper aid. That is what happened with Apple, which had received special rulings in Ireland dating back to the early 1990s that allowed it to avoid paying billions of euros in taxes in that country. Those rulings allowed two Irish subsidiaries of Apple that held valuable intellectual property licenses to exclude profits linked to those licenses from their taxable income in Ireland.

In 2016 the Commission challenged that arrangement and ordered Ireland to recover the aid. At the behest of both Apple and the Irish government, a lower court rescinded that order in 2020. The EU’s highest legal authority, the Court of Justice, just ruled the other way and put Apple on the hook for about 13 billion euros.

Legal disputes over state aid are common in the EU. Since 1999 the Commission has brought more than 300 challenges and forced companies to repay billions of euros. Yet it is also common for deep-pocketed corporations to appeal those decisions—and often they succeed. Amazon, for example, successfully appealed a ruling by the Commission against its tax deal with Luxembourg.

From what I can tell, the largest case prior to Apple in which a Commission challenge survived appeals was one in which the electric utility EDF had to pay back over 1 billion euros to the French government. When the Commission announced its action in 2015, the EU’s top competition regulator, Margrethe Vestager, was quoted as saying: “Whether private or public, large or small, any undertaking operating in the Single Market must pay its fair share of corporation tax. The Commission’s investigation confirmed that EDF received an individual, unjustified tax exemption which gave it an advantage to the detriment of its competitors, in breach of EU State aid rules.”

The Apple ruling reinforces the idea that special tax breaks are harmful both to competition and to fair taxation. We are a long way from that realization in the U.S., where tax deals and other incentives are widely treated as corporate entitlements.

Note: The Apple and EDF cases, along with much more, will be included in the forthcoming Violation Tracker Global.

Tax Credits and Fraud

The relentless corporate pursuit of special tax breaks is bad for the fiscal health of cities and states, but it is usually completely legal. An exception to this rule is taking place in New Jersey, where a well-connected company has been the target of a criminal investigation.

Holtec International, the company in question, is involved in various energy-related businesses, including the decommissioning of defunct nuclear power plants. In 2014 it was the recipient of a $260 million tax-related subsidy from the Grow New Jersey Assistance Program to create jobs at a facility in the struggling city of Camden. As the advocacy group New Jersey Policy Perspective pointed out, the deal had weak provisions relating to local hiring, training programs and even the number of jobs the company would actually have to create to get the tax benefits.

Despite benefitting from that largesse, Holtec got itself in trouble when it allegedly tried to cheat a different tax incentive program, the Angel Investor Tax Credit. The company qualified for a credit based on a $12 million investment it made in the battery company Eos Storage. That credit is capped at $500,000.

According to the New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, Holtec sought to circumvent that limit by trying to make it appear that it and a related company called Singh Real Estate Enterprises had each separately invested $6 million in Eos and thus could each claim the $500,000 credit. Holtec allegedly did so by submitting misleading documents to the state’s Economic Development Authority (EDA).

In announcing the resolution of the case against Holtec, the AG recently said: “We are sending a clear message: no matter how big and powerful you are, if you lie to the State for financial gain, we will hold you accountable — period.”

Yet Holtec is getting off easy. The AG allowed the company to enter into a deferred prosecution agreement instead of facing criminal charges. Under that agreement, Holtec must pay $5 million in penalties, forgo the angel investor credit and retain an independent monitor to oversee future dealings with the state.

Instead of showing appreciation for the leniency agreement, Holtec issued a sharply worded statement alleging that the entire investigation was retaliation after the state failed in a previous legal action against the company relating to that $260 million subsidy deal. The EDA had sought to rescind the award because the agency said it belatedly discovered that the company’s original application had not disclosed a disciplinary action brought against it by the Tennessee Valley Authority. That action, a temporary debarment, stemmed from a case in which Holtec was linked to improper payments made to a TVA manager to help secure a contract.

Holtec’s claim that its failure to mention the TVA debarment was inadvertent was accepted by the New Jersey courts and the tax credit was upheld.

This entire episode should serve as a reminder of the drawbacks of a system in which companies come to believe they have an absolute entitlement to tax breaks—and states don’t do enough to monitor the eligibility of applicants and the compliance of recipients. It also raises the question of whether there is more fraud in the economic development subsidy system than we have assumed.

Corruption Galore

For those convinced of the depravity of large corporations and the super-wealthy, recent days have provided an abundance of vindication. Thanks to the whistleblower at Facebook and an anonymous leaker of a vast collection of confidential financial documents dubbed the Pandora Papers, we have amazing new evidence of corruption and anti-social behavior.

Frances Haugen’s release of internal research paints a picture of Facebook as prioritizing profits ahead of taking steps to address evidence that its algorithms promote social animosity and that its products such as Instagram exacerbate mental health problems among teenage users.

The financial documents revealed in the Pandora Papers depict numerous billionaires and government leaders around the world as brazen tax cheats who are accumulating immense amounts of illegal assets in the form of high-end real estate, yachts and secret bank accounts.

Of course, none of this comes as a surprise. In fact, this is not the first large-scale leak of private financial records showing misappropriation, money laundering and tax evasion among the global elite. We already knew that Facebook is basically unconcerned about the damage caused by its services.

As is always the case after major revelations like these, the main question is whether policymakers will do anything to address the problems. The odds that the Pandora Papers will prompt Congress to act are reduced somewhat by the fact that the disclosures do not include much about members of the U.S. elite. Major controversies have erupted in countries such as Jordan, Kenya and the Czech Republic, whose leaders are among those implicated in the documents. U.S. individuals consist mainly of lesser-known billionaires and art dealers.

Perhaps the most salient U.S. angle in the Pandora Papers is the increasingly important role played by states such as South Dakota as tax havens for elites seeking to shield illicit assets. To some extent this is an issue for state legislatures, though a bill has been introduced in Congress that would require trust companies and others to screen foreign clients seeking to move assets through the U.S. financial system.

There may be more policy momentum when it comes to Facebook. It and the other tech giants have been receiving criticism, for varying reasons, from members of Congress across the political spectrum. Along with the issues raised by the whistleblower, there are increasing concerns about the concentration of ownership within the tech sector. Among other things, Facebook is the subject of a new antitrust complaint by the Federal Trade Commission.

An article in the Washington Post quotes lawmakers suggesting that this may be tech’s “Big Tobacco moment,” a reference to the time in the late 1990s when the major cigarette manufacturers lost their stranglehold over public policy and ended up having to accept stronger federal regulation and paying out tens of billions of dollars in class action settlements.

It is good to hear that legislators are thinking in those terms, but they will have to turn up the heat much higher on Facebook, which so far is not admitting any culpability and whose CEO is too young to remember much about the 1990s.

Wage Reparations

Donald Trump got a lot of mileage during his presidential campaign from criticizing the poor record of wage growth during the Obama era. Since taking office he has done nothing to directly address the issue. In fact, his administration’s attacks on labor rights have made it more difficult for workers to push for higher pay through unions.

Instead, Trump and his Republican allies in Congress came up with the cynical ploy of promoting their massive corporate tax giveaway as an indirect way of boosting paychecks. The right has always tried to lure labor with the promise of higher net pay that would come from reduced withholding schedules. Yet this time the claim was that companies would respond to reductions in their tax liabilities by boosting gross pay.

From the perspective of labor market dynamics, this made no sense whatsoever. There is no direct tie between corporate tax rates and wage levels. Most of the U.S. public seemed to understand this and expressed little enthusiasm for the tax bill.

Now, however, selected corporations are in effect colluding with Trump by announcing selective wage increases that they claim are inspired by the corporate tax reductions. Walmart is the latest and largest of the employers to play this game with plans to increase starting wages for its “associates” to the princely sum of $11 an hour. Some employees will be awarded one-time bonuses ranging from $200 (for those on the job for less than two years) to $1,000 for those hardy souls who have stuck it out for 20 years.

This plan, like the ones announced by the likes of AT&T and Wells Fargo, is far from a market response to lower taxes. These companies are no doubt using the increases to curry favor with the White House in the hope of better outcomes in their federal regulatory problems.

Then there’s the fact that these are increases that Walmart in particular had to make in response to previous wage hikes at its competitors. Even so, Walmart’s increases will leave many of its employees short of a living wage.

Another reason to doubt these moves are tax-inspired acts of generosity is that the companies involved each have a history not only of keeping wages down but of taking steps to deny workers the full pay to which they were entitled. In other words, all three have a history of wage theft.

Walmart, of course, was long the most notorious employer in this regard. It found myriad ways to get employees to work off the clock, thus violating the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. In the late 2000s Walmart was fined $33 million by the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division and paid out hundreds of millions of dollars more to settle a slew of private collective-action lawsuits.

AT&T and its subsidiaries have paid out more than $80 million to settle about a dozen similar wage and hour and misclassification cases. Wells Fargo and its subsidiaries have paid more than $120 million in at least 17 cases.

These settlements provided some necessary relief, but the amounts probably don’t begin to approximate the full extent to which the companies shortchanged their workers.

Consequently, whatever voluntary pay increases the companies are offering now can be seen as additional reparations for their past sins of wage theft.

If the management of Walmart really wanted to solve its compensation shortcomings once and for all, it would at long last recognize the right of its workers to form a union and bargain collectively.

Note: the litigation figures cited here come from data being collected for a forthcoming expansion of Violation Tracker.

The Corporate Crook Conquest of the Executive Branch

It appears that the Trump Administration will not rest until every last federal regulatory agency is under the control of a corporate surrogate. The reverse revolving door is swinging wildly as business foxes swarm into the rulemaking henhouses.

Among the latest predators is Alex Azar II, who was just nominated by Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services, a position Tom Price had to vacate amid the uproar over his excessive use of chartered jets for routine government travel. Until earlier this year Azar was the president of the U.S. division of pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly.

Azar apparently shares Price’s abhorrence of the Affordable Care Act, but he also brings the perspective of a top executive for a drug company with a particularly sordid track record. For the past 40 years Lilly has been embroiled in a series of scandals involving unsafe products and the marketing of drugs for unapproved uses. Among the many cases were some that involved criminal charges.

In 1985 Lilly pleaded guilty to charges that it failed to notify federal regulators about deaths and illnesses linked to Oraflex. The company’s former chief medical officer entered a plea of no contest to similar individual charges. A Justice Department report put the number of deaths the company had covered up at 28.

In 2009 the U.S. Justice Department announced that Lilly had agreed to pay a $515 million criminal fine as part of the resolution of allegations relating to the illegal marketing of its schizophrenia drug Zyprexa.

The company has also faced bribery allegations. In December 2012 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Lilly would pay a total of $29.4 million to resolve charges that some of its subsidiaries violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by making improper payments to win business in Russia, Brazil, China and Poland.

Violation Tracker’s tally on Eli Lilly amounts to $1.49 billion in penalties since 2000.

Meanwhile, the Senate has confirmed (along party lines) the Trump Administration’s nomination of coal mining executive David Zatezalo to head the Mine Safety and Health Administration. For seven years Zatezalo served as chairman of Rhino Resource Partners, where he clashed with MSHA over the company’s safety problems. The agency issued two rare “pattern of violation” warnings against the company. Violation Tracker contains 160 cases involving Rhino with total penalties of more than $2 million.

And given the headlong rush by Congressional Republicans to pass their tax legislation, it should be noticed that the Trump Administration’s interim head of the Internal Revenue Service (following the resignation of John Koskinen, who had been named by Obama) is David Kautter, who spent most of his career at the accounting firm Ernst & Young, which now prefers to be called EY.

Kautter was in charge of the tax compliance department at Ernst, which to a great extent meant helping clients dodge their fiscal obligations. In 2013 the firm had to pay $123 million to settle federal criminal charges of wrongful conduct in connection with illegitimate tax shelters (it was offered a non-prosecution agreement).

The phrase regulatory capture used to refer to tendency of agencies to gradually become more sympathetic to the needs of the industries they were supposed to oversee. Under Trump that process has been accelerated, with regulatory posts being given to individuals who are already corporate insiders or shills for the worst the business world has to offer. More than regulatory capture, it is the corporate crook conquest of the executive branch.

Tax Dodgers and Regulatory Scofflaws

Large corporations in the United States like to portray themselves as victims of a supposedly onerous tax system and a supposedly oppressive regulatory system. Those depictions are a far cry from reality, but that does not stop business interests from seeking to weaken government power in both areas.

This year has been a bonanza. The Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans have taken aim at numerous Obama-era regulatory initiatives and now are serving up a banquet of business tax breaks.

At the same time, corporations take matters into their own hands by using every opportunity to circumvent tax obligations and regulatory safeguards. The newly released Paradise Papers are just the latest indications of how large corporations such as Apple (and wealthy individuals) use offshore havens to shield billions of dollars in profits from taxation.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy has published a list of more than 300 Fortune 500 companies that hold some $2.6 trillion offshore, thereby avoiding about $767 billion in federal taxes. Of these, ITEP has found indications that 29 corporations keep their holdings not only outside the United States but in tax haven countries where they pay very little in local taxes.

It should come as no surprise that quite a few of these tax dodgers also show up high on the list of regulatory scofflaws documented in Violation Tracker. In fact, one of the 29 is Bank of America, which has racked up $57 billion in fines and settlements since 2000 — far more than any other corporation. ITEP reports that B of A has $17.8 billion in unrepatriated income.

Also on the ITEP list is Citigroup, with $47 billion in unrepatriated income. It ranks 5th on the Violation Tracker list, with more than $16 billion in fines and settlements. Wells Fargo has $2.4 billion in unrepatriated income and $11 billion in penalties, but that latter figure is likely to rise as various cases relating to the bank’s bogus account scandal are resolved.

Banks are not the only overlaps between the two lists. For example, pharmaceutical company Amgen has $36 billion in unrepatriated income and $786 million in penalties.

Major regulatory violators can also be found on the larger list of corporations that are known to have large offshore holdings but do not disclose enough information to allow ITEP to determine whether those holdings are in tax havens. Chief among these are other pharmaceutical giant such as Pfizer ($197 billion offshore and $4.3 billion in penalties), Johnson & Johnson ($66 billion offshore and $2.5 billion in penalties), Merck ($63 billion offshore and $2 billion in penalties) and Eli Lilly ($28 billion offshore and $1.4 billion in penalties).

Also on the list are petroleum majors such as Exxon Mobil ($54 billion offshore and $714 million in penalties) and Chevron ($46 billion offshore and $578 million in penalties).

The mindset that prompts corporate executives to use international tax dodging techniques seems to be related to the one that encourages them to break environmental, consumer protection and other laws at home. The logical course of action would be to tighten both tax and regulatory enforcement, but those currently in charge of federal policymaking instead want to make it even easier for large corporations to make out like bandits.

A Windfall for the Forbes 400 and the Fortune 500

We now know who it was Donald Trump was really addressing in his convention speech last summer when he declared “I am your voice”: the Forbes 400 and others in the upper reaches of the 1 Percent.

The one-page tax outline just released by the Trump Administration — with its pass-through scheme, its radical reduction in statutory corporate tax rates, and its elimination of the alternative minimum tax, the estate tax and taxation of overseas business profits — provides an unrestrained windfall for Trump’s own billionaire class.

In defiance of all evidence, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin is insisting that this is not a giveaway to the rich but instead is “all about jobs, jobs, jobs.” This is the same official who, harking back to the snake oil of the Reagan Administration, insists that the tax cuts will “pay for themselves.”

The claim that the corporate tax cuts will boost the economy and job creation is based on the widely promoted but largely baseless claim that U.S. business is burdened with excessively high rates. As groups such as the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy have repeatedly shown over the years and which ITEP documents once again in a recent report, many large corporations pay effective tax rates far below the 35 percent statutory rate. And through the aggressive use of tax avoidance techniques, quite a few of those manage to bring their effective rate down to zero or less.

Even if one accepts the questionable connection between taxes and job creation, Trump’s proposal would have no effect on employment in sectors such as utilities, industrial machinery, telecommunications and oil & gas, which ITEP shows are already paying effective rates below 15 percent.

There are sectors currently paying rates well above 15 percent, but it is not clear that lower taxes would do much to create jobs — and even less so, good jobs. One of the highest effective rates can be found in the retail sector, which despite this supposed burden, has over the year added millions of jobs. Unfortunately, most of those positions are substandard. The typical retail wage is about a third lower than the average for the private sector as a whole.

Recently, retail employment has been falling, but this has nothing to do with taxes; it’s the result of the increasing number of people buying stuff online rather than from brick-and-mortar stores. Giving big tax cuts to Wal-Mart and Dollar General will not reverse the job loss nor will it improve the wages of their remaining workers.

It’s also unclear what benefits will come from reducing taxes on health care companies, which also pay effective rates close to the statutory level. Taxes have not stood in the way of massive employment growth in this sector, which on the whole pays better than retail but has a substantial number of low-wage jobs. The future of this sector depends not on taxes but instead on whether Trump and Congressional Republicans succeed in dismantling the Affordable Care Act.

Another part of the Trump outline that will do little to create good jobs is the call for the repatriation and light taxation of foreign profits that corporations have been parking overseas. Business apologists have long made extravagant claims for this policy, but previous experiments with repatriation holidays did not boost jobs or even investment and instead simply fattened profits and dividends.

Those who put together the Trump tax outline are either oblivious to the discussion in recent years about growing income and wealth inequality or they deliberately set out to make the problem much worse. In either event, the plutocrats are rejoicing.

Corporate Criminals and Public Office

Donald Trump’s candidacy is based to a great extent on the notion that a successful businessman would make an effective President. Democrats have shot holes in Trump’s claims of success, but they have not done enough to attack the underlying claim that private sector talents are applicable to the public realm.

The conflation of business and government acumen is all the more dangerous at a time when the norm in the corporate world is increasingly corrupt. The observation by Bernie Sanders during the primaries that “the business model of Wall Street is fraud” applies well beyond the realm of investment banking. Have those calling for government to operate more like business been paying attention to Wells Fargo, Volkswagen and EpiPen-producer Mylan?

It used to be that the main threat was that unscrupulous corporations would use investments in the political and legislative process to bend policymaking to favor their interests. Trump has shown that a corporate miscreant can use a pseudo-populist platform to try to take office directly.

Trump is not unique in this regard. Take the case of West Virginia, where a controversial billionaire coal operator is leading the polls in the state’s gubernatorial race. Jim Justice brags that he is a “career businessman” not a career politician, yet that career includes racking up some $5 million in fines imposed by the Mine Safety and Health Administration, according to Violation Tracker. To make matters worse, NPR and Mine Safety News reported in 2014 that Justice resisted paying these fines. An NPR update says that $2.6 million in MSHA fines and delinquency penalties remain unpaid even as the Justice mining operations continue to get hit with more safety violations.

On top of this, NPR estimates that the Justice companies face more than $10 million in federal, state and county liens for unpaid corporate income, property and minerals taxes. About one-third of the total is owed to poor West Virginia counties. Like Donald Trump, Justice has failed to follow through on charitable commitments yet has managed to pump several million dollars into his campaign.

Did I mention that Justice is the Democratic candidate? He is not, however, supporting Hillary Clinton though he is tight with conservative Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin. Justice’s Republican opponent is state senate president Bill Cole, whose super PAC received a $100,000 contribution from a super PAC funded by the Koch brothers. This was after Cole spoke at the Koch’s private conservative donors conference in Palm Springs last February, reportedly using his remarks to emphasize his commitment to getting a “right to work” law passed in West Virginia. While in the legislature Cole has also been cozy with the American Legislative Exchange Council and has pushed the crackpot supply-side economic prescriptions of Arthur Laffer. Cole is also an enthusiastic supporter of Trump.

It is difficult to know which is worse: a candidate in the pocket of unscrupulous corporate special interests or one who is himself one of those corporate miscreants. It is troubling to think that our elections increasingly come down to such an untenable choice.

Trump’s Accountant, Bogus Tax Shelters and My Lost Inheritance

Jack Mitnick may end up denying the presidency to Donald Trump. He also helped deprive me of my inheritance.

As the world now knows, the accountant confirmed to the New York Times the authenticity of leaked Trump tax return documents prepared by him that reported an annual loss of some $916 million in 1995 that may have allowed the mogul to avoid federal taxes for nearly two decades.

Trump was not Mitnick’s only client in the 1990s. He and his firm Spahr Lacher & Sperber also did work for my maternal grandfather Julius Nasso, who owned a concrete construction company in New York City. That firm did quite well for its work on projects such as Madison Square Garden and the Javits Convention Center.

My grandfather, who died in 1999, prospered from the business, but his wealth, I regret to say, was also enhanced through the use of dubious tax shelters involving coal leases. That’s where Mitnick comes in. From what I know, Mitnick’s firm either set up my grandfather in the shelters or at least prepared tax returns in which they were used to greatly reduce his tax liabilities.

The Internal Revenue Service eventually challenged the shelters, but my grandfather, apparently with Mitnick’s help, refused to settle. It was only after his death that the dispute was resolved by my family with a substantial payment to the IRS. One consequence of this was that the bequests in his will to me and the other grandchildren could not be fulfilled.

I long treated this as a private family matter, but after Mitnick’s name appeared in the Times story I did some research on him. I found that in 1981 Mitnick and other parties were sued by William Freschi Jr. in his role as trustee of the estate of his father, who like my grandfather had invested in coal lease tax shelters. The suit accused Mitnick, who was described as the administrator of Grand Coal Venture, and others of defrauding his father.

The case had a long and complicated legal history, including a racketeering charge and an action by the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1985 Mitnick and the other defendants were found guilty of securities fraud and ordered to pay Freschi $266,500 in damages, plus $126,681.75 in pre-judgment interest. The Court of Appeals, however, later overturned the award against Mitnick but did not completely exonerate him.

Given Mitnick’s close working relationship with Trump — the accountant is mentioned in The Art of the Deal — one cannot help wonder whether he also arranged for Trump to participate in the phony coal tax shelters. Given the other tax dodging tricks available in connection with his real estate holdings, Trump may not have needed them, but this is another question that will be answered only when Trump releases his full tax returns.

In the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that my grandfather’s company operated at times in a joint venture with S&A Concrete, a firm with alleged mob connections that separately did substantial business on Trump projects.