For months, Nazi-loving Harlan Crow and members of Congress have been engaged in a fight over whether the billionaire needs to divulge details about his gifts to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, including globe-trotting trips aboard his 162-foot yacht, the Michaela Rose. Crow’s lawyer argues that Congress has no authority to probe the GOP donor’s generosity and that doing so violates a constitutional separation of powers between Congress and the Supreme Court.
But as it turns out, there are federal tax laws underlying their interest and a known propensity by the ultrarich to use their yachts to skirt those laws. Tax data obtained by ProPublica provides a glimpse of what congressional investigators would find if Crow were to open his books to them. Crow’s voyages with Thomas, the data shows, contributed to a nice side benefit: They helped reduce Crow’s tax bill.
The rich, as we’ve reported, often deduct millions of dollars from their taxes related to buying and operating their jets and yachts. Crow followed that formula through a company that purported to charter his superyacht. But a closer examination of how Crow used the yacht raises questions about his compliance with the tax code, experts said. Despite Crow's representations to the IRS, ProPublica reporters could find no evidence that his yacht company was actually a profit-seeking business, as the law requires.
“Based on what information is available, this has the look of a textbook billionaire tax scam,” said Senate Finance Committee chair Ron Wyden. “These new details only raise more questions about Mr. Crow’s tax practices, which could begin to explain why he’s been stonewalling the Finance Committee’s investigation for months.”
No comments:
Post a Comment