According to the indictment, the Trump Organization company paid for rent, utilities and garage expenses on a Riverside Boulevard apartment that chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg and his wife occupy.
The indictment says the company maintained internal spreadsheets tracking the amounts it paid for Weisselberg’s rent, utilities and garage expenses, and that it accordingly reduced the amount of direct compensation to account for the expenses it was paying for him. The company didn’t withhold income taxes on the indirect compensation, and Weisselberg reported only his direct compensation on his tax returns, according to the indictment.
Though Weisselberg began living in a Riverside Boulevard apartment rented by the company for him in 2005, he didn’t say he was a New York City resident on his taxes until 2013, when he sold his home in Wantagh, New York, thereby avoiding paying city income taxes, according to the indictment.
Between 2005 and June 2021, prosecutors said that Weisselberg received indirect employee compensation from the Trump Organization in the approximate amount of $1.76 million, the indictment said.
Over that span prosecutors say Weisselberg “thereby evaded approximately $556,385 in federal taxes, approximately $106,568 in state taxes, and approximately $238,159 in New York City taxes, and he falsely claimed and received approximately $94,902 in federal tax refunds and approximately $38,222 in state tax refunds, to which he was not entitled.”
More details: The indictment alleges the tuition payments were part of a “scheme to defraud” and that Trump Organization personnel, including Weisselberg, arranged for the tuition payments for Weisselberg’s family members.
Jennifer Weisselberg, Allen Weisselberg’s former daughter-in-law, previously told CNN she believed Trump paid for tuition for her two children to attend the elite private school Columbia Grammar & Preparatory School, and that she shared this information with prosecutors.
Prosecutors allege in the indictment that the payments for Weisselberg’s grandchildren were “indirect compensation” and were not included on Weisselberg’s W-2 forms, and that no income taxes were withheld by the Trump Organization or Trump Payroll Corp. in connection with the tuition payments.
“Weisselberg intentionally caused the tuition payments to be omitted from his personal tax returns, despite knowing that those payments represented taxable income and were treated as compensation by the Trump Corporation in internal records,” the indictment stated.
