Trump casinos got a tax break under Christie’s administration

New Jersey’s auditors and lawyers had been battling for several years to collect long-overdue taxes owed by Donald Trump’s casinos.

US.- By the time the Republican Chris Christie became governor of New Jersey, the state’s auditors and lawyers had been battling for several years to collect long-overdue taxes owed by the casinos founded by his friend Donald Trump in Atlantic City.

New Jersey had pursued the debt through two of the casinos’ bankruptcy cases, even accusing the company led by Trump of filing false reports with state casino regulators regarding the amount of taxes it had paid.

However, the year after Christie took office, the tone of the litigation completely changed. The state began to entertained settlement offers. By December 2011, after six years in court, the state agreed to accept just US$5 million, which is roughly 17 cents on the dollar of what auditors said the casinos owed.

Thanks to that measure, Trump’s casinos did far better than those that benefited from a program Christie introduced in Atlantic City back in 2014, under which the state agreed to consider reducing penalties for delinquent taxpayers but only if they caught up on all overdue taxes and interest.

“You can’t tell whether there’s something problematic, but it’s pretty striking that this one was written down so much,” said David Skeel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School who specialises in bankruptcy law and reviewed the case at the request of The New York Times.