Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) is asking Palm Beach County 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, NBC News reports.
Wrote Moskowitz: “Between 2011 and 2021, you value the Mar-a-Lago property between $18 million and $28 million. Mar-a-Lago was listed as worth $490 million in financial documents given to banks. If the property value of Mar-a-Lago is so much higher than it was appraised, will you be amending the property value in line with the Trump family’s belief that the property is worth well over a billion dollars?”
The Florida statute of limitation on collecting back taxes is 3 years.
Rep Moskowitz’s idea is so fantastic, that I’d propose they look back 3 years and collect back taxes also.
It could backfire. They could submit that the local government agrees with the evaluation so they can say it’s a legitimate filing.
I guess the smart move, then, is to wait until the court case is over. If the court rules their was no fraud (which means the property valuation was accurate), then Florida should be ruthless about collecting back taxes. If the court rules that there was fraud, then Trump is subjected to whatever penalties the court hands out, but won’t have to pay any additional back taxes.
Either way, Trump owes a debt - either to the court for fraud, or to the State of Florida for unpaid taxes.
Or both, because we all know he lowballed the value to the state to pay less tax in the first place.
…and simultaneously highballed the value so he’d get better loan conditions.
And neither number is likely anywhere close to what the actual value is.
Fraud has already been determined. All the court is doing now is deciding damages
Except in that case, then they’re paying back taxes for 3 years on a billion dollars… might be more than the fines from the lawsuit.
I think it’s more of an IF. IF he wins on this fraud charge, yeah the county should raise its evaluation and tax him. If no, then obviously not
Sounds like the taxpayer might be made whole to me
This general kinda shit drives me nuts.
Some local millionaire with the most valuable estate in my county had it evaluated at like 10 mil. They cried foul, and haggled it down to like 8.4 mil to ease their tax burden. 😢
It’s now in sale for fucking 30 million. Tax that bitch at the rate for 30 million, immediately. You can’t argue it down and for taxes and sell it up for profit.
Tax assessments never equal market prices. This may be an extreme example though.
They usually lag fmv by a few years in my experience. But I’ve never seen a case where they are 2500+% less than the value of the property.
Wait until you learn about ag exemptions.
There’s a 5-acre undeveloped property at a major interstate crossing in the city I work for that’s taxed at a $12,000 valuation, but is under contract for a $22,000,000 sale.
Fun fact: tax assessments on expensive properties tend to lag market prices much more than they do on lower-class ones. It’s yet another way the system is structurally set up to subsidize the rich.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/03/opinion/sunday/property-taxes-housing-assessment-inequality.html
Ours have been above and below in Texas but that is a whole other issue.
The market and assessed price is same or higher than market around Boston for a few years now. I noticed since ~2015 most towns seem to have given 20-30% bumps to assessed value on most properties once or twice.
Sir, this is Florida. You must be mistaking us with democracy.
Hell ide be impressed if you managed to reach the lofty heights of “a government.”
Oh, I’m sorry, I thought this was America 🇺🇸.
Florida resident here: The Save Our Homes amendment prevents property tax from increasing more than 3% per year for homesteaded properties (and I’m sure Trump filed for that tax break as soon as he qualified for it). Trump might be shielded from paying taxes on the full claimed value, but only on the part that he calls home.
Florida resident here, Trump didn’t live on the property between 2011-2019. He should be liable for the increase.
It won’t save him much, that’s for sure. Florida’s homestead exemption knocks $25k off the assessed value (and no school taxes on the next $25k, or something like that). For me it’s a lot of money. For Mar-a-Lago it’s a rounding error.
Ah yes, the $450 million homestead!
Joking aside, cool info thx.
Imagine DeSantis directing the tax accessor to reevaluate based upon court documentation. Could be an interesting fight
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!
Business 101
Everyone commenting here doesn’t seem to realize that markets fluctuate and the actual value of a property can’t be determined until it actually goes up for sale. So the current value is always an estimate. There are evaluations that can be done to get a close approximation of what a property might go for, but it’s just an educated guess in reality.
Where Trump went wrong is obviously just making up values both high (to secure loans)and low (to pay less taxes). The fraud he was found guilty of will punish him for the former, and going after him as Moskowitz is would take care of the latter.
From my limited experience tax assessments tend to be conservative, as people squawk if they go too high.
Real estate appraising is an art and a science, but if you just invent a number with no basis in reality, it’s plain old fraud.
Yeah, that’s not reality in today’s market. It may have been more accurate when the market was slower, and prices more stable. But now appraisals are basically “well, here are the comps. Things shift drastically over months, so it’s really just worth what someone will pay.”
Using comparables from even 6 months ago or a few blocks away isn’t going to be accurate today.
When we let people who own many widgets estimate the value of a widget, the price of a widget can just keep going up every 6 months. And then down again at tax time.
It’s a great time to be a widget owner.
I had someone come to my house and tell me what it worth without selling it
Wouldn’t this just legitimize the value? A fine for overestimating the value would seem a better punishment
Overvaluing real estate is part of what’s causing the housing crisis we’re experiencing.
I feel like setting a precedent for this could be helpful. If someone sells a house for higher than the value they’re being taxed at, they should pay that tax rate for the last 3 years or whatever number is decided is fair.
The incentive to overvalue properties would be gone.
Overvaluing really isn’t an issue causing the housing crisis.
It is more supply and demand as the real cause. when interest rates were low, investors got involved in buying up homes leading to property values rising even more.
From a property tax perspective there’s so many variables that contribute to the value of a house that assessment values are based more on average of a neighborhood area instead of on a house by house basis. Unless the house is sold.
A houses true value is really only known when a sale occurs in the vast majority of cases as the true value is what someone else is willing to pay.
The last home we lived in was 1200 sqft and assessed at 135k if I remember correctly. We sold at around 230k when our neighborhood caught up to rising property values in the city. New owners stayed for a year adding only a privacy fence and sold for 330k.
While I think those sale prices are insane, someone else saw the value and agreed to the price.
Ok, maybe housing crisis is not what I meant, but it sure doesn’t help rent prices. The more someone pays for a house, the more they’ll charge for rent. Rent prices can be kept down by not allowing jackasses to massively oversell their house to their buddy in a money laundering scheme.
Maybe it could be within a certain percent of the latest assessment or something?
I dunno I’m just spitballing an idea here. Someone smarter than me can figure out the actual numbers.
