2aguy
Diamond Member
- Jul 19, 2014
- 111,972
- 52,240
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Yes.....the left wing, one percenters are a funny bunch...just not when they are actually trying to be funny on t.v. No, they are funny when they bitch and bitch and bitch about the unfair tax system and how the rich get richer and how horrible that is........while they cash check after check after check.....and then hide their money from the IRS........just like this doofus....
The John Oliver Property Tax Scam: HBO Comedian Secretly Buys Manhattan Mansion
So it’s a little surprising to discover that just months before, Oliver had a tax attorney set up two revocable trusts, one for him and one for his wife, to hide the couple’s purchase of a $9.5 million Manhattan penthouse. Then he used a tax loophole created by Donald Trump himself back in the 1970s, when the current president was merely a prominent New York real estate developer and aspiring celebrity author.
The loophole in question is the banally named “421-a” tax dodge, which was recently attacked in a Daily News op-ed written by two New York state Democrats, one a senator and the other an assemblyman. They said that the original 421-a tax exemption was “designed to encourage new development in locations that were vacant or underutilized,” but that Trump wanted to use it in 1980 when he bought Bonwit Teller in midtown Manhattan. The plan was to tear it down and build Trump Tower, which would mix office space and luxury condos.
“Told by Mayor Ed Koch that the Bonwit site could not qualify for a 421-a tax break, Trump and his lawyer — the infamous Roy Cohn — sued the city,” the News op-ed recalls. “In the end, they won a tax exemption worth $50 million for the extravagant Trump Tower. More importantly, Trump’s lawsuit established that all new development, even luxury projects, would be automatically eligible for the 421-a exemption.”
The article said that the 421-a provision, which expired last year in a political impasse but that Albany is considering revising, will rob state coffers of $1.3 billion of revenue “this year alone in foregone property taxes.”
But just four months before Oliver’s July show, he had hired slick New York law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, which, in addition to union-busting and representing BP America, ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, specializes in helping the rich find tax breaks and buy real estate. Proskauer also has a long-time Private Client Servicesgroup, whose “lawyers handle complex tax and estate planning matters for wealthy multinational families,” as well as “executives, Internet entrepreneurs, art collectors and investors, professionals and real estate developers, among others,” according to its website.
Oliver’s lawyer at the firm was Jay Waxenberg, who “focuses his practice on estate and tax planning and estate and trust administration.” Waxenberg, the website goes on, “represents many families with significant multigenerational wealth, and has assisted them in the structuring of their estate plans so as to minimize gift, estate and generation-skipping taxes in the transmission of their wealth through several generations.”
In other words, Waxenberg is exactly the type of fancy pants attorney who helps his 1 percent clientele get the tax breaks and use the loopholes that Oliver gets such mileage deriding on TV.
In Oliver’s case, Waxenberg set up two revocable trusts — JO, named for John Oliver, and KNO, named for his wife Kate Norley Oliver — with Waxenberg as the trustee and his law firm serving as the trusts’ registered address. The trusts were then used to create a shell company called Hoagie’s Place LLC, named for Oliver’s beloved dog. Incidentally, Kate Norley Oliver’s New York voter registration shows she is a Democrat and lives in the penthouse in question.
The John Oliver Property Tax Scam: HBO Comedian Secretly Buys Manhattan Mansion
So it’s a little surprising to discover that just months before, Oliver had a tax attorney set up two revocable trusts, one for him and one for his wife, to hide the couple’s purchase of a $9.5 million Manhattan penthouse. Then he used a tax loophole created by Donald Trump himself back in the 1970s, when the current president was merely a prominent New York real estate developer and aspiring celebrity author.
The loophole in question is the banally named “421-a” tax dodge, which was recently attacked in a Daily News op-ed written by two New York state Democrats, one a senator and the other an assemblyman. They said that the original 421-a tax exemption was “designed to encourage new development in locations that were vacant or underutilized,” but that Trump wanted to use it in 1980 when he bought Bonwit Teller in midtown Manhattan. The plan was to tear it down and build Trump Tower, which would mix office space and luxury condos.
“Told by Mayor Ed Koch that the Bonwit site could not qualify for a 421-a tax break, Trump and his lawyer — the infamous Roy Cohn — sued the city,” the News op-ed recalls. “In the end, they won a tax exemption worth $50 million for the extravagant Trump Tower. More importantly, Trump’s lawsuit established that all new development, even luxury projects, would be automatically eligible for the 421-a exemption.”
The article said that the 421-a provision, which expired last year in a political impasse but that Albany is considering revising, will rob state coffers of $1.3 billion of revenue “this year alone in foregone property taxes.”
But just four months before Oliver’s July show, he had hired slick New York law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, which, in addition to union-busting and representing BP America, ChevronTexaco and ExxonMobil, specializes in helping the rich find tax breaks and buy real estate. Proskauer also has a long-time Private Client Servicesgroup, whose “lawyers handle complex tax and estate planning matters for wealthy multinational families,” as well as “executives, Internet entrepreneurs, art collectors and investors, professionals and real estate developers, among others,” according to its website.
Oliver’s lawyer at the firm was Jay Waxenberg, who “focuses his practice on estate and tax planning and estate and trust administration.” Waxenberg, the website goes on, “represents many families with significant multigenerational wealth, and has assisted them in the structuring of their estate plans so as to minimize gift, estate and generation-skipping taxes in the transmission of their wealth through several generations.”
In other words, Waxenberg is exactly the type of fancy pants attorney who helps his 1 percent clientele get the tax breaks and use the loopholes that Oliver gets such mileage deriding on TV.
In Oliver’s case, Waxenberg set up two revocable trusts — JO, named for John Oliver, and KNO, named for his wife Kate Norley Oliver — with Waxenberg as the trustee and his law firm serving as the trusts’ registered address. The trusts were then used to create a shell company called Hoagie’s Place LLC, named for Oliver’s beloved dog. Incidentally, Kate Norley Oliver’s New York voter registration shows she is a Democrat and lives in the penthouse in question.
