Chicago Officials Trying To Block $1 Million Tax Refund On Trump Building

Authored by Isabel van Brugen via The Epoch Times,

Chicago officials are trying to block former President Donald Trump from receiving a $1 million tax refund that the Illinois Property Tax Appeal Board ruled is owed on his Chicago skyscraper’s 2011 tax bill.

The office of Cook County State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx filed a lawsuit with the Illinois Appellate Court on July 9 disputing the refund, noting that the money would come out of the property taxes due to the city of Chicago, the Chicago Public Schools and several other government agencies.

The lawsuit comes after the board ruled in a 5-0 vote in June that the former president is owed a total tax refund of $1.03 million as the value of the Trump International Hotel & Tower had been overassessed.

The tax agency ruled that the “Cook County Board of Review overestimated the value of the building’s hotel rooms and retail space,” the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the Trump Organization for comment.

The dispute over the tax bills on the high-rise building is the latest chapter in a long-running legal battle over Trump’s tax bills that started more than 12 years ago and has led to more than $14 million in tax breaks for the former president.

Originally, the state agency rejected Trump’s argument that the vacant stores had no value because he could not find any tenants to lease them. A hearing officer for the state agency rejected Trump’s argument that the vacant stores at the building had no value because he couldn’t lease them. But a staff member later wrote a report that Trump was entitled to the refund.

The agency delayed acting on the case until Trump was out of office and in June voted to reduce the assessment on the building’s commercial property.

This comes as the Department of Justice said that tax officials must hand over Trump’s tax returns to a congressional panel, after a lawyer in the department’s Office of Legal Counsel on July 31 reversed a 2019 decision that said they didn’t have to be given to Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, because Neal was “disingenuous” about the true purpose of seeking the returns.

After Trump was elected in 2016, a number of Democrats have attempted to obtain his tax returns. The former president has refused to release them to the public.