Rep. Jared Moskowitz calls for Palm Beach County to tax Mar-a-Lago at the rate Trump claims it's worth
Trump has claimed his Florida resort is worth as much as $1.5 billion, but the Palm Beach County property appraiser valued it far lower.
A Democratic House member is asking Palm Beach County, Florida, to tax Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property at the rate the former president claims it is worth amid his ongoing civil fraud trial in New York.
In a letter first provided to NBC News, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., issued the request to Dorothy Jacks, Palm Beach County's property appraiser.
Moskowitz noted New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling last week saying that Trump repeatedly committed acts of fraud for years. Engoron ruled that Trump lied to banks and insurers by overvaluing and undervaluing his assets while exaggerating his net worth to billions of dollars.
I'm like 90% sure I saw a headline a month or so ago saying Trump "sold" Mar-a-Lago to his son. Seems like you could just take a look at that sale price for both the taxes and to evaluate its worth, although since it was sold to a family member the valuation is a bit suspect.
Edit: Since people are still commenting on it, see the child comments on here for details, but apparently that headline was incorrect and based on a bogus Zillow listing.
That was actually untrue. Zillow removed the listing and admitted it never happened.
Interesting. I wonder if it was a listing created by someone else to generate controversy or how such a listing was generated. I've never used Zillow, do they not do any kind of verification of ownership before posting a listing? If so that seems like a massive opportunity for scammers. I'll need to do some googling and see if I can find that news story because all I saw was the previous headline claiming it had been sold.
Edit: After some digging my opinion of Zillow is now pretty low. Apparently the report of the sale was filled with major red flags but Zillow still listed it without question. The contact for the sale was listed as Brad Pitt, and the square footage was listed as 6,000 square feet instead of the actual square footage of 62,500. Both of those errors should have been enough to get someone at Zillow to take a much closer look, but apparently the only thing they actually checked was that the address listed on the sale matched.
Yeah, Zillow has a property I own listed as a 4 BR, 3 Bath house, valued at a half a million bucks. There's no actual structure at all--much less a house!!--on the property! And the property itself is worth about 100k at the most.
I don't know where they get their info from, but I know for sure they do not verify.
You saw and fell victim to a bullshit headline. That you apparently unwittingly believed it and never checked back means that whoever wanted that headline out there got exactly what they wanted.
I have no love for Trump but people have GOT to start being vastly more critical of what they read online, especially when its something so blatantly unusual.
So what happened?
Details are limited, but what I've been able to piece together is that someone got a bogus sale report into some kind of feed that Zillow monitors. The report was full of factual red flags, but apparently Zillow didn't bother doing any kind of verification and just blindly listed the sale on their website. Various media outlets then saw the Zillow listing did some minimal digging and ran stories reporting the sale. At that point places like lemmy then had posts referencing the various media sources, who of course cited Zillow, who doesn't make their sources public.
After the story blew up Trump and his relatives responded saying the story was false at which point it seems Zillow finally took a look at things and realized whatever source they used was bogus. Zillow then removed the sale report from their site and issued a notice that "a mistake" had led to an incorrect listing being published.
What happened is that someone reported a false sale to Zillow. Who did it and why are up for speculation but it was almost certainly meant as an outrage generator and it apparently worked perfectly.
If true, it’s Florida law that the property be reassessed.
Turns out it isn't, see any of the other comments in here. It was all based on a listing Zillow put up that was in turn based on something that was apparently bogus. Details on what source Zillow used seem hard to come by, but I did see one report claiming that that source listed the point of contact for the sale as Brad Pitt and that the square footage was an entire order of magnitude smaller than it actually is.
A bit suspect? A bit? You're dense enough for tank armor.
Rude
Dense? Sounded like sarcasm to me.
You've never heard of exaggeration?
This is why centrists lean right -_- stop attacking someone you essentially agree with, it's pointless.
Because of people on the Internet being mean instead of, yknow, policies?
They're as much a big group of utterly disgusting morally deficited morons as I thought!
Nevermind "conservatives" are so much more blatantly horrible online.
Jeez, think before you type
I did think before I typed. I'm not a centrist, and I'm not conservative. I'm pointing out a long running issue with people on the left attacking others on the left.
Also why put conservatives in quotes? Conservatives ARE more blatantly horrible online, but not to other conservatives. They are welcoming to centrists, unlike Leftists.
You're actually continuing to prove my point. Insulting everyone that doesn't 100% agree with you is bad. Maybe having good policies AND not being a dick is a good idea
Billionaries when its time to pay their taxes
That's because you only pay taxes on your earnings, not on your savings. Silly pleb!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Democratic House member is asking Palm Beach County, Florida, to tax Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property at the rate the former president claims it is worth amid his ongoing civil fraud trial in New York.
In a letter first provided to NBC News, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., issued the request to Dorothy Jacks, Palm Beach County's property appraiser.
Moskowitz noted New York Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling last week saying that Trump repeatedly committed acts of fraud for years.
Engoron ruled that Trump lied to banks and insurers by overvaluing and undervaluing his assets while exaggerating his net worth to billions of dollars.
Trump has raged against Engoron’s ruling, insisting that his Florida resort is worth “50 to 100 times” what prosecutors in the New York civil case have said, or “closer to $1.5 billion.”
Moskowitz, first elected in 2022, is a moderate Democrat who represents a district in Florida that includes parts of Palm Beach County.
The original article contains 306 words, the summary contains 156 words. Saved 49%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
"Assessed value" and "market value" are different.
My homes assessed and market value difference is 13%, not 400%.
Nifty.
Your home doesn't have restrictive covenants that don't allow people to live there.
K, then that would mean that it should be worth less overall, right?
Yes ..
Is your home sitting in an insanely wealthy area of the country where the mega-wealthy control the assessors office?
While I'm sure that Mar-a-Lago isn't worth a Billion even the Real Estate Agents in Florida are saying the property is worth a minimum of 300 Million. For perspective a 2.3 acre lot nearby is currently listed at $200 Million and Mar-a-Lago has 20 Acres!
The sub 20 million dollar valuation accepted by the Court is absolutely absurd. That amount of money wouldn't even buy you Mar-a-Lago's driveway.
It has covenants that prevent it from being used as a home or residence. It's worth less than other properties because of those use restrictions. Yes Donald is in violation of those covenants by living there. But when you're a star, you know, they just let you do it.
LOL, you have no idea how exclusive real estate works do you? The wealthy will pay absolutely MASSIVE premiums to keep away from the poors. It's why every property in that neighborhood is stupidly expensive.
do you acknowledge the existence of said restrictions? or are we just giving anecdotal commentary?
Do you acknowledge that other properties in that same area with those same restrictions are listing and selling well over the 100 Million dollar mark?
I hear what you are saying but it doesn't match with documented reality. You are entitled to your opinion but not your own set of facts.
Which other properties in the area have the same restrictions? I didn't know about that.
lmao this sound exactly why the special silver boy is on trial on NY right now, if I recall correctly the judge referred to it as a "fantasy world".
You could argue that being owned by a former President and being the source of so many trips during his presidential term it became known as "The Southern White House" or "Winter White House" should increase its value.
By virtue of the fact that up until just a few months ago, you could even go there and casually peruse security sensitive and classified information if only you found the right bathroom, I guess you could say it was priceless.
You could argue that, but you'd be wrong. Watch Selling LA to see what a celebrity premium is worth lol.
Trump crosses that line from celebrity to President, but Presidents aren't normal celebrities.
I agree, had he never become President, the resort owned by "that Apprentice guy" wouldn't carry additional value.
Presidential properties are a different class.
bwahahaha those dumb names haven't heard in a while, I prefer Mar a Lardo personally, would that increase the property value? maybe the classified documents you can find in the shitter?