{"id":2932,"date":"2015-06-17T09:46:00","date_gmt":"2015-06-17T17:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/the-problem-with-donald-trumps-one-page-summary-on-his-wealth\/2932\/"},"modified":"2015-06-17T09:46:00","modified_gmt":"2015-06-17T17:46:00","slug":"the-problem-with-donald-trumps-one-page-summary-on-his-wealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/the-problem-with-donald-trumps-one-page-summary-on-his-wealth\/","title":{"rendered":"The Problem With Donald Trump's One-Page Summary On His Wealth"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Peter Overby<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

\"Donald<\/a><\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Donald Trump displays a copy of a summary of his net worth during his presidential announcement Tuesday. Richard Drew\/AP<\/strong> hide caption<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

i<\/strong>toggle caption Richard Drew\/AP<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Just how much is Donald Trump worth?<\/p>\n

“I’m really rich,” Trump declared during his presidential announcement Tuesday in New York at Trump Tower, one of the many buildings around the world donning his name.<\/p>\n

But just how rich has always been a question. It was one before the real-estate mogul declared for president and, well, it remains a big question afterward, too, despite Trump holding up a one-page form declaring he is worth roughly $9 billion.<\/p>\n

Trump has never liked to get specific about his wealth, but presidents and presidential candidates have no choice. Federal ethics law<\/a> requires them to file annual disclosure reports, including a financial disclosure form 30 days after officially announcing.<\/p>\n

“A lot of pundits on television said he’ll never run,” Trump boasted. “He’s too private, and he’s probably not as successful as everybody thinks.”<\/p>\n

And with that, he brandished his answer: a one-page “Summary of Net Worth,” which he said was produced\u00ad by his accounts and a “big accounting firm, one of the most highly respected.”<\/p>\n

The summary puts Trump’s assets at $9.24 billion and his liabilities at just $503 million, giving him a net worth of just over $8.7 billion.<\/p>\n

[embedded content]<\/div>\n

That’s more than double an estimate from the Forbes list of billionaires, which pegged it at $4.1 billion. But, particularly at this level of personal wealth, the numbers released hardly tell the whole story. The one-page summary makes it difficult to unravel how the math is calculated. Specific buildings, real estate and holdings are not itemized, like they are required to be in a more detailed candidate financial disclosure.<\/p>\n

The properties Trump owns can be assessed at book value \u2014 roughly speaking, the initial cost minus depreciation \u2014 or they can be assessed at fair-market value. The real-estate market can be volatile, and sometimes there are big gaps, especially if the real estate is Trump Tower and the Grand Hyatt hotel in midtown Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Trump appears to be leaving millions of dollars on the table, a real-estate investment adviser said, by paying off his mortgage debt rather than using low-interest loans to leverage the real estate for reinvestment.<\/p>\n

Another questioned whether the real-estate values might be overstated. Both advisers asked to speak on the condition on anonymity.<\/p>\n

“There’s not enough information to really understand it,” said Frederick Chinn, an advisor at the Atalon Group in Henderson, Nev. “There are a lot of questions I would have just looking at the statement.”<\/p>\n

Then there’s the value of the Trump brand. Trump’s statement judges his “real estate licensing deals, brand and branded developments” to be worth $3.3 billion.<\/p>\n

But to Forbes, the brand is worth less than $300 million, said Anand Chokkavelu, managing editor of the Motley Fool investing website Fool.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I side with Forbes,” Chokkavelu said. “I don’t see any reason to take his self-reported net worth at face value.”<\/p>\n

Trump has a July 16 deadline for filing the official disclosure. He said he would do it on time.<\/p>\n

“Everything will be filed eventually with the government,” Trump declared at his announcement, “and we don’t [need] extensions or anything. We’ll be filing it right on time. We don’t need anything.”<\/p>\n

There are legal liabilities for misreporting. Although the feds can grant deadline extensions, Fox News might not. It has a Republican debate scheduled Aug. 6, and candidates must file if they<\/a> want to participate.<\/p>\n

But even when a candidate files a more detailed disclosure, accuracy is hard to nearly impossible to enforce, watchdogs warn. Newt Gingrich in 2011, for example, filed a disclosure that did not list<\/a> his paid speeches or television analyst contract. They were lumped in with income from Gingrich Productions, obscuring the details.<\/p>\n

“Once you throw your hat in that ring, there’s a bunch of laws that are supposed to apply to you, not all of them are enforced with the same level of rigor,” Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, told NPR’s Joel Rose<\/a>. “And the financial disclosure is one of those areas where candidates have a lot of leeway to fudge the numbers.”<\/p>\n

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org\/content-only\/faq.php#publishers.<\/em><\/p>\n

Source:: http:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/itsallpolitics\/2015\/06\/17\/415003043\/the-problem-with-donald-trumps-one-page-summary-on-his-wealth?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=business<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"Donald<\/a><\/div>\n
\n
<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Donald Trump displays a copy of a summary of his net worth during his presidential announcement Tuesday. Richard Drew\/AP<\/strong> hide caption<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

i<\/strong>toggle caption Richard Drew\/AP<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Just how much is Donald Trump worth?<\/p>\n

“I’m really rich,” Trump declared during his presidential announcement Tuesday in New York at Trump Tower, one of the many buildings around the world donning his name.<\/p>\n

But just how rich has always been a question. It was one before the real-estate mogul declared for president and, well, it remains a big question afterward, too, despite Trump holding up a one-page form declaring he is worth roughly $9 billion.<\/p>\n

Trump has never liked to get specific about his wealth, but presidents and presidential candidates have no choice. Federal ethics law<\/a> requires them to file annual disclosure reports, including a financial disclosure form 30 days after officially announcing.<\/p>\n

“A lot of pundits on television said he’ll never run,” Trump boasted. “He’s too private, and he’s probably not as successful as everybody thinks.”<\/p>\n

And with that, he brandished his answer: a one-page “Summary of Net Worth,” which he said was produced\u00ad by his accounts and a “big accounting firm, one of the most highly respected.”<\/p>\n

The summary puts Trump’s assets at $9.24 billion and his liabilities at just $503 million, giving him a net worth of just over $8.7 billion.<\/p>\n

[embedded content]<\/div>\n

That’s more than double an estimate from the Forbes list of billionaires, which pegged it at $4.1 billion. But, particularly at this level of personal wealth, the numbers released hardly tell the whole story. The one-page summary makes it difficult to unravel how the math is calculated. Specific buildings, real estate and holdings are not itemized, like they are required to be in a more detailed candidate financial disclosure.<\/p>\n

The properties Trump owns can be assessed at book value \u2014 roughly speaking, the initial cost minus depreciation \u2014 or they can be assessed at fair-market value. The real-estate market can be volatile, and sometimes there are big gaps, especially if the real estate is Trump Tower and the Grand Hyatt hotel in midtown Manhattan.<\/p>\n

Trump appears to be leaving millions of dollars on the table, a real-estate investment adviser said, by paying off his mortgage debt rather than using low-interest loans to leverage the real estate for reinvestment.<\/p>\n

Another questioned whether the real-estate values might be overstated. Both advisers asked to speak on the condition on anonymity.<\/p>\n

“There’s not enough information to really understand it,” said Frederick Chinn, an advisor at the Atalon Group in Henderson, Nev. “There are a lot of questions I would have just looking at the statement.”<\/p>\n

Then there’s the value of the Trump brand. Trump’s statement judges his “real estate licensing deals, brand and branded developments” to be worth $3.3 billion.<\/p>\n

But to Forbes, the brand is worth less than $300 million, said Anand Chokkavelu, managing editor of the Motley Fool investing website Fool.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“I side with Forbes,” Chokkavelu said. “I don’t see any reason to take his self-reported net worth at face value.”<\/p>\n

Trump has a July 16 deadline for filing the official disclosure. He said he would do it on time.<\/p>\n

“Everything will be filed eventually with the government,” Trump declared at his announcement, “and we don’t [need] extensions or anything. We’ll be filing it right on time. We don’t need anything.”<\/p>\n

There are legal liabilities for misreporting. Although the feds can grant deadline extensions, Fox News might not. It has a Republican debate scheduled Aug. 6, and candidates must file if they<\/a> want to participate.<\/p>\n

But even when a candidate files a more detailed disclosure, accuracy is hard to nearly impossible to enforce, watchdogs warn. Newt Gingrich in 2011, for example, filed a disclosure that did not list<\/a> his paid speeches or television analyst contract. They were lumped in with income from Gingrich Productions, obscuring the details.<\/p>\n

“Once you throw your hat in that ring, there’s a bunch of laws that are supposed to apply to you, not all of them are enforced with the same level of rigor,” Bill Allison, a senior fellow at the Sunlight Foundation, told NPR’s Joel Rose<\/a>. “And the financial disclosure is one of those areas where candidates have a lot of leeway to fudge the numbers.”<\/p>\n

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org\/content-only\/faq.php#publishers.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2932\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/associatednews.info\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}