JEFFERY A. SALTER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
President Trump participated in dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud, that greatly increased the fortune he received from his parents, an investigation by The New York Times has found.
《纽约时报》的一项调查发现，特朗普总统在上世纪90年代采取了一些可疑的避税方案，包括一些完全属于欺诈的做法，从而大大增加从父母那里得到的财富。
Mr. Trump won the presidency proclaiming himself a self-made billionaire, and he has long insisted that his father, the legendary New York City builder Fred C. Trump, provided almost no financial help.
特朗普以一个白手起家的亿万富翁的形象赢得了总统大选。他长期以来一直坚称，他的父亲、传奇的纽约建造商弗雷德·C·特朗普(Fred C. Trump)几乎没有给他提供任何经济帮助。
But The Times’s investigation, based on a vast trove of confidential tax returns and financial records, reveals that Mr. Trump received the equivalent today of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate empire, starting when he was a toddler and continuing to this day.
但时报基于大量的保密纳税申报单和财务记录进行的调查显示，特朗普从他父亲的房地产帝国获得了以今日价格为计至少4.13亿美元的财产，财产的转移从他蹒跚学步时开始，一直到持续到今天。
Much of this money came to Mr. Trump because he helped his parents dodge taxes. He and his siblings set up a sham corporation to disguise millions of dollars in gifts from their parents, records and interviews show. Records indicate that Mr. Trump helped his father take improper tax deductions worth millions more. He also helped formulate a strategy to undervalue his parents’ real estate holdings by hundreds of millions of dollars on tax returns, sharply reducing the tax bill when those properties were transferred to him and his siblings.
流向特朗普的钱有相当一部分是由于他在帮助父母避税。记录和采访显示，他和他的兄弟姐妹们成立了一个皮包公司，用以遮掩父母赠送给他们的成百上千万美元。记录显示，特朗普帮助父亲使用不正当的税收减免，总减免数额高达数百万美元。他还帮助制订了一个策略，将纳税申报单上父母持有的房产的价值低估了数亿美元，大幅降低了将这些房产转移给他和他的兄弟姐妹时的税负。
These maneuvers met with little resistance from the Internal Revenue Service, The Times found. The president’s parents, Fred and Mary Trump, transferred well over $1 billion in wealth to their children, which could have produced a tax bill of at least $550 million under the 55 percent tax rate then imposed on gifts and inheritances.
时报发现，这些做法几乎没有受到来自美国国税局的反对。总统的父母弗雷德和玛丽·特朗普(Mary Trump)将远高于10亿美元的财富转移给了自己的孩子们，按照那时对赠与和遗产征收的55%的税率计算，这可能会产生至少5.5亿美元的税金账单。
The Trumps paid a total of $52.2 million, or about 5 percent, tax records show.
税务记录显示，特朗普父母总共支付了5220万美元的税，即大约5%。
The president declined repeated requests over several weeks to comment for this article. But a lawyer for Mr. Trump, Charles J. Harder, provided a written statement on Monday, one day after The Times sent a detailed description of its findings. “The New York Times’s allegations of fraud and tax evasion are 100 percent false, and highly defamatory,” Mr. Harder said. “There was no fraud or tax evasion by anyone. The facts upon which The Times bases its false allegations are extremely inaccurate.”
时报在几周里多次请求总统对这篇报道置评，均被拒绝。不过，特朗普的律师查尔斯·J·哈德(Charles J. Harder)在时报送去关于调查结果的详细描述的一天后，于上周一提供了一份书面声明。“《纽约时报》关于欺诈和逃税的指控是百分之百不实的，属严重的诽谤，”哈德说。“不存在任何欺诈或逃税。时报进行错误指控所依赖的事实极其不准确。”
Mr. Harder sought to distance Mr. Trump from the tax strategies used by his family, saying the president had delegated those tasks to relatives and tax professionals. “President Trump had virtually no involvement whatsoever with these matters,” he said. “The affairs were handled by other Trump family members who were not experts themselves and therefore relied entirely upon the aforementioned licensed professionals to ensure full compliance with the law.”
哈德试图让特朗普与他的家人使用的税收策略保持距离，他说，总统把这些任务委托给了亲戚和税务专业人士。“特朗普总统与这些事务几乎毫无瓜葛，”他说。“这些事情是由特朗普的其他家庭成员处理的，他们本身并不是专家，因此完全依赖上述持牌专业人士，以确保完全遵守法律。”
The president’s brother, Robert Trump, issued a statement on behalf of the Trump family:
总统的弟弟罗伯特·特朗普代表特朗普家族发表声明：
“Our dear father, Fred C. Trump, passed away in June 1999. Our beloved mother, Mary Anne Trump, passed away in August 2000. All appropriate gift and estate tax returns were filed, and the required taxes were paid. Our father’s estate was closed in 2001 by both the Internal Revenue Service and the New York State tax authorities, and our mother’s estate was closed in 2004. Our family has no other comment on these matters that happened some 20 years ago, and would appreciate your respecting the privacy of our deceased parents, may God rest their souls.”
我们敬爱的父亲弗雷德·C·特朗普于1999年6月去世。我们亲爱的母亲玛丽·安妮·特朗普于2000年8月去世。所有适当的赠与和遗产税报税表都已提交，并已支付了应缴的税款。美国国税局和纽约州税局都已于2001年注销了我们父亲的遗产账户，并已于2004年注销了我们母亲的遗产账户。我们的家人对这些发生在约20年前的事情没有其他的评论，并希望你们尊重我们已故父母的隐私，愿上帝让他们的灵魂得到安息。”
The Times’s findings raise new questions about Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his income tax returns, breaking with decades of practice by past presidents. According to tax experts, it is unlikely that Mr. Trump would be vulnerable to criminal prosecution for helping his parents evade taxes, because the acts happened too long ago and are past the statute of limitations. There is no time limit, however, on civil fines for tax fraud.
时报的调查结果引发了人们对特朗普拒绝公布个人所得税申报表的新质疑，特朗普违反了前任总统几十年来的做法。根据税务专家的说法，特朗普不太可能因为帮助父母逃税而受到刑事起诉，因为这些行为发生在很久以前，已经超过了法定诉讼时效。然而，对于税务欺诈的民事罚款没有时限。
The findings are based on interviews with Fred Trump’s former employees and advisers and more than 100,000 pages of documents describing the inner workings and immense profitability of his empire. They include documents culled from public sources — mortgages and deeds, probate records, financial disclosure reports, regulatory records and civil court files.
这些调查基于对弗雷德·特朗普的前雇员和顾问的采访，以及描述他的房产帝国内部运作和巨大盈利能力的逾10万页的文件。其中包括从公共来源文件中找到的东西——抵押贷款和契约、遗嘱认证记录、财务披露报告、监管记录和民事法庭文件。
The investigation also draws on tens of thousands of pages of confidential records — bank statements, financial audits, accounting ledgers, cash disbursement reports, invoices and canceled checks. Most notably, the documents include more than 200 tax returns from Fred Trump, his companies and various Trump partnerships and trusts. While the records do not include the president’s personal tax returns and reveal little about his recent business dealings at home and abroad, dozens of corporate, partnership and trust tax returns offer the first public accounting of the income he received for decades from various family enterprises.
调查还使用了数万页的保密记录——银行结单、财务审计、会计账薄、现金支出报告、发票和注销的支票。最值得注意的是，这些文件包括了来自弗雷德·特朗普、他的公司以及各种特朗普合作伙伴关系和信托公司的200多份纳税申报表。尽管这些记录不包括总统本人的个人纳税申报表，也几乎没有披露任何他近年来的国内外业务往来，但数十份企业、合作伙伴和信托公司的纳税申报表首次公开了总统几十年来从各种家族企业获得的收入。
What emerges from this body of evidence is a financial biography of the 45th president fundamentally at odds with the story Mr. Trump has sold in his books, his TV shows and his political life. In Mr. Trump’s version of how he got rich, he was the master dealmaker who broke free of his father’s “tiny” outer-borough operation and parlayed a single $1 million loan from his father (“I had to pay him back with interest!”) into a $10 billion empire that would slap the Trump name on hotels, high-rises, casinos, airlines and golf courses the world over. In Mr. Trump’s version, it was always his guts and gumption that overcame setbacks. Fred Trump was simply a cheerleader.
从这些证据中得到的信息可以说是第45任总统的金融传记，这份传记与特朗普在他的书、电视节目和政治生活中兜售的故事有着根本的差异。在特朗普讲述的自己如何致富的版本里，他擅长做交易，他摆脱了父亲在偏僻城区经营“小”生意的限制，把从父亲那里借来的唯一一笔100万美元贷款（“我必须得连本带利还给他的！”），变成了一个100亿美元的帝国，把特朗普的名字贴上了酒店、高楼大厦、赌场、航空公司和世界各地的高尔夫球场的门面。在特朗普的版本中，永远是他的勇气和进取心让他克服了困难。弗雷德·特朗普只不过是一个啦啦队员。
“I built what I built myself,” Mr. Trump has said, a narrative that was long amplified by often-credulous coverage from news organizations, including The Times.
“我自己营造了我营造的东西，”特朗普说。这种说法长期以来一直被轻信的媒体报道（包括时报的）加以放大。
Certainly a handful of journalists and biographers, notably Wayne Barrett, Gwenda Blair, David Cay Johnston and Timothy L. O’Brien, have challenged this story, especially the claim of being worth $10 billion. They described how Mr. Trump piggybacked off his father’s banking connections to gain a foothold in Manhattan real estate. They poked holes in his go-to talking point about the $1 million loan, citing evidence that he actually got $14 million. They told how Fred Trump once helped his son make a bond payment on an Atlantic City casino by buying $3.5 million in casino chips.
当然，个别记者和传记作家，尤其是韦恩·巴雷特(Wayne Barrett)、格温达·布莱尔(Gwenda Blair)、戴维·塞·约翰斯顿(David Cay Johnston)和蒂莫西·L·奥布莱恩(Timothy L. O’brien)，对这个故事提出过质疑，尤其是特朗普声称的自己高达100亿美元的身家。他们描述了特朗普如何利用他父亲的银行关系，在曼哈顿的房地产市场站稳了脚跟。他们戳穿了他对那项100万美元贷款的常用说法，称有证据表明他实际上从父亲那里得到了1400万美元。他们讲述了弗雷德·特朗普如何通过购买350万美元的赌场筹码，帮助儿子支付了大西洋城(Atlantic City)一家赌场的一笔债券还款。
But The Times’s investigation of the Trump family’s finances is unprecedented in scope and precision, offering the first comprehensive look at the inherited fortune and tax dodges that guaranteed Donald J. Trump a gilded life. The reporting makes clear that in every era of Mr. Trump’s life, his finances were deeply intertwined with, and dependent on, his father’s wealth.
但时报对特朗普家族财务状况的调查在广度和准确度上都是前所未有的，调查首次揭示了确保唐纳德·J·特朗普(Donald J. Trump)过上富贵生活的遗产继承和避税行为。时报报道清楚地表明，在特朗普一生的每个时期，他的财务都与他父亲的财富紧密相连，并依赖于他父亲的财富。
唐纳德·J·特朗普在童年时期从他的父亲弗雷德·C·特朗普那里获得了财富。
By age 3, Mr. Trump was earning $200,000 a year in today’s dollars from his father’s empire. He was a millionaire by age 8. By the time he was 17, his father had given him part ownership of a 52-unit apartment building. Soon after Mr. Trump graduated from college, he was receiving the equivalent of $1 million a year from his father. The money increased with the years, to more than $5 million annually in his 40s and 50s.
特朗普3岁时就已从父亲的房地产帝国挣到了（以今天的美元计算）20万美元的年收入。他8岁时已是一名百万富翁。到他17岁的时候，父亲已经给了他一栋有52套公寓的大楼的部分所有权。特朗普大学毕业后不久，他就从父亲那里得到相当于100万美元的年收入。这些钱随着年龄的增长而增加，到他四五十岁的时候，已超过每年500万美元。
Fred Trump’s real estate empire was not just scores of apartment buildings. It was also a mountain of cash, tens of millions of dollars in profits building up inside his businesses, banking records show. In one six-year span, from 1988 through 1993, Fred Trump reported $109.7 million in total income, now equivalent to $210.7 million. It was not unusual for tens of millions in Treasury bills and certificates of deposit to flow through his personal bank accounts each month.
弗雷德·特朗普的房地产帝国不只是几十栋公寓楼。银行记录显示，他的财产还包括一笔巨额现金，这些钱是他从经营中积累起来的数千万美元的利润。在1988年至1993年的六年时间里，弗雷德·特朗普报税表上报告的总收入为1.097亿美元，相当于现在的2.107亿美元。数千万美元的短期国库券和定期存单每月从他的个人银行账户中流过，并不罕见。
Fred Trump was relentless and creative in finding ways to channel this wealth to his children. He made Donald not just his salaried employee but also his property manager, landlord, banker and consultant. He gave him loan after loan, many never repaid. He provided money for his car, money for his employees, money to buy stocks, money for his first Manhattan offices and money to renovate those offices. He gave him three trust funds. He gave him shares in multiple partnerships. He gave him $10,000 Christmas checks. He gave him laundry revenue from his buildings.
弗雷德·特朗普殚精竭虑、千方百计把这笔财富转移给子女。唐纳德不光成了他的受薪雇员，还成了他的不动产经理人、房东、银行家和顾问。他借给唐纳德一笔又一笔款，许多都从未偿还。他给了唐纳德买车的钱、雇佣员工的钱、在曼哈顿买下第一处办公室的钱和重新装修这些办公室的钱。他给了他三个信托基金。他给了他好几家合伙企业的股份。他给了他10000美元的圣诞节支票。他给了他自己房产项目里洗衣房的收入。
Much of his giving was structured to sidestep gift and inheritance taxes using methods tax experts described to The Times as improper or possibly illegal. Although Fred Trump became wealthy with help from federal housing subsidies, he insisted that it was manifestly unfair for the government to tax his fortune as it passed to his children. When he was in his 80s and beginning to slide into dementia, evading gift and estate taxes became a family affair, with Donald Trump playing a crucial role, interviews and newly obtained documents show.
他给的这些钱很多都设法避开了赠与及遗产税，税务专家对《纽约时报》说那些手段是不正当的，可能是非法的。尽管弗雷德·特朗普当年是受惠于联邦政府的住房补贴政策才发的家，他却坚持认为政府在他把财产过户给子女时征税是明显不公平的。记者采访及新近获得的文件显示，在他八十多岁开始患上失智症时，逃避赠与税和不动产税就成了家族事务，而唐纳德·特朗普扮演了至关重要的角色。
The line between legal tax avoidance and illegal tax evasion is often murky, and it is constantly being stretched by inventive tax lawyers. There is no shortage of clever tax avoidance tricks that have been blessed by either the courts or the I.R.S. itself. The richest Americans almost never pay anything close to full freight. But tax experts briefed on The Times’s findings said the Trumps appeared to have done more than exploit legal loopholes. They said the conduct described here represented a pattern of deception and obfuscation, particularly about the value of Fred Trump’s real estate, that repeatedly prevented the I.R.S. from taxing large transfers of wealth to his children.
合法避税和非法逃税之间的界限往往是模糊的，而且不断被勇于创新的税务律师们改变着。有不少巧妙的避税手段是蒙法院或国税局本身所赐。那些最富有的美国人几乎从不缴足额的税。但看过《纽约时报》所获材料的税务专家说，特朗普一家的做法似乎不仅仅是利用法律漏洞。他们说这些材料里描述的做法呈现出一种瞒天过海、混淆视听的套路，尤其是有关弗雷德·特朗普名下不动产的价值，这一次次阻止了国税局在他向子女转移大笔财富时征税。
“The theme I see here through all of this is valuations: They play around with valuations in extreme ways,” said Lee-Ford Tritt, a University of Florida law professor and a leading expert in gift and estate tax law. “There are dramatic fluctuations depending on their purpose.”
“我从这些材料里看到的主题是估值：他们用各种极致手法在估值上做手脚，”佛罗里达大学法学教授李-福特·特里特(Lee-Ford Tritt)说，他也是赠与及遗产税法的权威专家。“出于不同的目的，估值有极大的波动。”
The manipulation of values to evade taxes was central to one of the most important financial events in Donald Trump’s life. In an episode never before revealed, Mr. Trump and his siblings gained ownership of most of their father’s empire on Nov. 22, 1997, a year and a half before Fred Trump’s death. Critical to the complex transaction was the value put on the real estate. The lower its value, the lower the gift taxes. The Trumps dodged hundreds of millions in gift taxes by submitting tax returns that grossly undervalued the properties, claiming they were worth just $41.4 million.
唐纳德·特朗普一生中最重要的一个财务事件中，通过价值操纵来逃税起到关键作用。特朗普和兄弟姐妹于1997年11月22日，也就是弗雷德·特朗普去世前一年半，获得了父亲商业帝国的绝大部分所有权，此事此前从未披露。复杂的财产移交当中至关重要的是不动产的价值。价值越低，赠与税就越低。特朗普一家提交了严重低估不动产价值的报税表，声称其价值仅为4140万美元，由此躲过了数亿美元的赠与税。
The same set of buildings would be sold off over the next decade for more than 16 times that amount.
这批房产在随后十年内售出，价钱比这个数字高出16倍多。
The most overt fraud was All County Building Supply & Maintenance, a company formed by the Trump family in 1992. All County’s ostensible purpose was to be the purchasing agent for Fred Trump’s buildings, buying everything from boilers to cleaning supplies. It did no such thing, records and interviews show. Instead All County siphoned millions of dollars from Fred Trump’s empire by simply marking up purchases already made by his employees. Those millions, effectively untaxed gifts, then flowed to All County’s owners — Donald Trump, his siblings and a cousin. Fred Trump then used the padded All County receipts to justify bigger rent increases for thousands of tenants.
最明目张胆的欺诈发生在“奥康提楼宇物资及维修”(All County Building Supply＆Maintenance)，这家公司是特朗普家族在1992年建立的。奥康提明面上的作用是弗雷德·特朗普建持有楼宇的采购代理商，负责购买从锅炉到清洁用品的所有物资。公司记录及记者采访显示，这些事它从没做过。实际上奥康提只是通过简单地虚增弗雷德·特朗普手下员工已完成的采购，就从他的资产帝国抽走了几百万美元。这几百万实际上成为未缴税的赠与，流向奥康提的持有人——唐纳德·特朗普、他的兄弟姐妹和一个表亲。然后弗雷德·特朗普再用奥康提注了水的发票来向数千租户说明房租大涨是合理的。
After this article was published on Tuesday, a spokesman for the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance said the agency was “reviewing the allegations” and “vigorously pursuing all appropriate areas of investigation.”
本周二的文章发表后，纽约州税务和财政部(New York State Department of Taxation and Finance)的一名发言人表示，该机构正在“审阅各项指控”并“积极推进所有适用领域的调查”。
All told, The Times documented 295 streams of revenue that Fred Trump created over five decades to enrich his son. In most cases his four other children benefited equally. But over time, as Donald Trump careened from one financial disaster to the next, his father found ways to give him substantially more money, records show. Even so, in 1990, according to previously secret depositions, Mr. Trump tried to have his father’s will rewritten in a way that Fred Trump, alarmed and angered, feared could result in his empire’s being used to bail out his son’s failing businesses.
《纽约时报》记录了五十年来弗雷德·特朗普为了儿子致富而创造的295项收入来源。大多情况下，四个子女受益均等。但记录显示，随着时间推移，当唐纳德·特朗普从一场财务灾难冲向另一场财务灾难，父亲给的钱要多了许多。即便如此，根据此前保密的几份证词，在1990年特朗普还是试图让他父亲改写遗嘱，这让弗雷德·特朗普感到惊慌愤怒，担心这可能会使他的江山被用来拯救他儿子失败的生意。
Of course, the story of how Donald Trump got rich cannot be reduced to handouts from his father. Before he became president, his singular achievement was building the brand of Donald J. Trump, Self-Made Billionaire, a brand so potent it generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue through TV shows, books and licensing deals.
当然，并不能把唐纳德·特朗普如何发家简单说成靠父亲施舍。在成为总统之前，他的一大成就是打造了唐纳德·J·特朗普这个品牌，一个自我奋斗而成的亿万富翁。这个品牌如此强大，仅通过电视节目、图书出版和授权交易就产生了数亿美元的收入。
Constructing that image required more than Fred Trump’s money. Just as important were his son’s preternatural marketing skills and always-be-closing competitive hustle. While Fred Trump helped finance the accouterments of wealth, Donald Trump, master self-promoter, spun them into a seductive narrative. Fred Trump’s money, for example, helped build Trump Tower, the talisman of privilege that established his son as a major player in New York. But Donald Trump recognized and exploited the iconic power of Trump Tower as a primary stage for both “The Apprentice” and his presidential campaign.
塑造这个形象光有弗雷德·特朗普的钱是不够的。他儿子超凡的营销技巧和一定要成交的争胜劲头同样重要。弗雷德·特朗普出资营造了财富的外表，而自我推销大师唐纳德·特朗普把这些外表编造成诱人的叙事。比如弗雷德·特朗普出钱帮助建造了特朗普大厦，一个权力的符号，使他的儿子成为纽约生意场上的一个主力玩家。但唐纳德·特朗普看到并利用了特朗普大厦的标志性力量，把它当作电视真人秀《学徒》(The Apprentice)的主舞台，也当作他总统选战的主舞台。
The biggest payday he ever got from his father came long after Fred Trump’s death. It happened quietly, without the usual Trumpian news conference, on May 4, 2004, when Mr. Trump and his siblings sold off the empire their father had spent 70 years assembling with the dream that it would never leave his family.
特朗普得到父亲的最大一笔赠与，是在弗雷德·特朗普去世多年之后。它是悄无声息地进行的，并没有一贯的特朗普式新闻发布会，那是2004年5月4日，特朗普和兄弟姐妹卖掉了父亲用70年营造的商业帝国，他当初还梦想着这份家业永远不会离开他的家族。
Donald Trump’s cut: $177.3 million, or $236.2 million in today’s dollars.
唐纳德·特朗普分得1.773亿美元，换算成今天的币值是2.362亿美元。
本文是《纽约时报》有关特朗普涉嫌逃税的特别调查报告完整版的第一部分，中文网将在本周陆续刊载后续章节，敬请关注。
作者：DAVID BARSTOW, SUSANNE CRAIG, RUSS BUETTNER
翻译：Hongyu Li、Cindy Hao
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