Why is the Trump campaign sending rent checks to a Long Island P.O. box?

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Donald Trump has charged his own campaign hundreds of thousands of dollars in rent for offices in Trump Tower for more than five years. But the campaign doesn't always send its rent to Trump Tower. In fact, most of the checks have gone to a post office box in Hicksville, New York, a suburban community on Long Island. It's not clear why, or who is receiving those checks. But experts say that the address may be of interest to Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who in a court filing earlier this week made his clearest statements yet about the scope and focus of his criminal investigation into President Trump's finances.

The Trump campaign has rented office space at Trump Tower, off and on, since Donald Trump first announced his candidacy in June 2015. Exactly how much space the campaign actually uses in the landmark Fifth Avenue building is unclear. FEC filings show that the rent started around $35,000 a month, then jumped over the $100,000 mark after Trump won the 2016 Republican nomination, before settling at its current rate of $37,541.67 a month, or about $450,500 a year. Sometimes the rent spikes, for reasons that are difficult to understand.

But while the campaign's payments go to Trump Tower Commercial LLC, the business operation behind Trump Tower — and ultimately to Trump himself — they don't always go to Trump Tower. Federal Election Commission records show that most of those checks have been sent to P.O. Box 1926 in Hicksville, which is a suburban town in central Nassau County, just south of Oyster Bay on the affluent North Shore of Long Island.

The Hicksville post office box has been described by Trump money watchers as the "white whale" of Trump's financial dealings. It is, in a word, bizarre — even by Trump standards. (The campaign did not reply to multiple specific requests for comment.) It's unclear whether other Trump Tower commercial tenants, such as the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, for instance, send their rent checks to Hicksville, or if they pay at the building itself — as the campaign itself did, for a while.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-tower-hicksville-why-trump-090002310.html

[lagomorph777]

1. Stake it out. Who picks up the checks?

[greenjar_01]

2. Dirty dirty dirty

The whole crew is filthy as the day is long.

[oldtime dfl_er]

3. An intrepid reporter

or even an interested citizen with a cellphone, should park themselves outside that post office until they get an answer.

[Grasswire2]

4. some news entity should have done the stakeout before releasing the story. nt

[stillcool]

7. it's all public record, and included in the story...by Salon

In 2015, 2016 and 2017, all rent checks all went to the Hicksville address. The rent payments stopped after September 2017, but resumed in 2018, the year after the Trump tax bill passed, and the same year that the campaign also took up offices in Rosslyn, Virginia. All rent checks in that year, 2018, went upstairs to the accountants in Trump Tower. But in the first half of 2019, the checks went back to Hicksville. Then, in the second half of that year, they once again went to Trump Tower.

The pattern grew even more erratic in 2020. This year, public filings show, the campaign has so far sent six of its eight rent checks to Hicksville — the two outliers being April and May, when the coronavirus ravaged the city and the checks went to Trump Tower, in Manhattan.

Interviews with state income tax and commercial property tax experts familiar with the workings of New York city and state yielded bafflement: Comments included, "Totally bizarre," "No idea," "I've never seen something like that" and "Holy shit, that's absolutely weird."

Vance's announcement this week that his office is investigating Trump for criminal tax fraud and misrepresenting business records might throw the Hicksville mystery in a new light.

[stillcool]

5. that is quite the article...

think I'd need a chart to understand all the different accounts involved.

Trump Tower Hicksville: Why is the Trump campaign sending rent checks to a Long Island P.O. box?
Roger Sollenberger
September 25, 2020
==========================================
Hicksville is in Nassau County, about 30 miles east of Manhattan. If Trump attached the Nassau County address to Trump Tower payments that should otherwise have qualified for income, payroll or occupancy taxes in Manhattan, and did not make that clear — or actively concealed it, possibly with a second bank account — that, experts say, could amount to fraud.

Another possibility is that Trump is using the Hicksville address to hide portions of rent income, which could give him a property tax advantage in the city, where appraisers tie income to property value and tax.

"Given the jurisdiction of the Manhattan D.A., a tax fraud charge makes total sense if manipulated rental income results in a lower real property tax assessment," a New York City tax attorney told Salon.

A corporate accountant told Salon that if Trump has expenses "that should be allocated to the Trump Organization, but are paid outside to another entity, like Trump Tower Commercial, less expenses means more income — so he could inflate the value to make himself look much wealthier than he is."

It turns out that the campaign didn't only expense its rent there. It also spent payroll.

[Rule of Claw]

6. So I know of course a campaign

has to pay the rent of its space, but I have never heard where a campaign can use funds to pay rent for its office space where the candidate is the landlord.