New Report Highlights Growing Tax Breaks for Wealthy Real Estate Investors Like Donald Trump

Following is a statement by Steve Wamhoff, the director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, regarding the report released today by Democrats on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee addressing tax breaks for real estate developers in the new tax law.

“The conclusion of this report should surprise no one. We have pointed out for months that true tax reform would eliminate the special breaks that benefit wealthy real estate investors like Donald Trump, but the tax bill he signed into law instead expanded those breaks.

“This was entirely predictable because Trump has long opposed any tax overhaul that would eliminate tax shelters benefiting him. Trump once told Congress that the 1986 tax reform, which nearly all observers see as a model for Congress to follow, was ‘an absolute catastrophe for the country and for the real estate industry’ and he helped the successful effort to have special provisions for real estate investors put back into the tax code in the 1990s.

“Given this history, today’s report only confirms what we have expected from the beginning about the new tax law.”