Susan Mancuso, an attorney who specializes in New York property tax, said the 16-percentage gap is a "very significant difference."
The Trump company states it and its affiliates occupied 31% of the tower in mid-2012.
However, tax reports from the previous January on claim the Trump Organization and related parties occupy only about 18%.
Financial expert, former accountant, and Montclair State University real estate professor Kevin Riordan reviewed the tax and loan records for Trump Tower, and he could not explain them.
He is not the only baffled professional.
Over a dozen tax and finance experts are unable to interpret the disparities between what Trump reported to banks and what he reported to tax officials pertaining to properties at 40 Wall Street and the Trump International Hotel and Tower near Columbus Circle.
Last month, New York Supreme Court Judge Saliann Scarpulla ordered Trump pay two million dollars to settle a claim he used his theoretically eleemosynary Donald J. Trump Foundation as a savings account for personal and political interests--including his own run for the White House.
This comes nearly a year after the foundation agreed to dissolve under judicial supervision and relinquish any remaining money to approved charities like the United Way, the United Negro College Fund, and the Holocaust Museum.
In January 2016, Trump reveled in the controversy he created over a feud with Fox News that motivated him to skip a planned Iowa debate and alternatively hold a charity for veterans.
That event raised $2.8 million dollars, yet documents filed with the Trump Foundation lawsuit prove no veterans ever received a penny of it.
It went instead toward the Trump campaign.
The following week, Trump doled out $500,000 donations from the foundation during a political event, going on to making writing local charities checks part of his campaign-rally routine.
He must also reimburse the foundation $11,525 for charity-auction items--"sports paraphernalia"like a signed Tim Tebow football helmet, and champagne.
Also last month, Trump completed a "declaration of domicile," changing his primary residence from 721 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach late last month.
Maybe it's because New York is assiduously pursuing the grift upon which Donald Trump has predicated his financial life.
In September, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance subpoenaed eight years of Trump's tax returns as part of the investigation into hush-money payments Trump paid to women, including adult film actor Stormy Daniels, during the 2016 presidential election.
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