If you have basically free money, millions of dollars worth, you set aside a certain % as the cost of doing business.
You decide your "profit" depending on how much of it would be taxable.
If you are coming in ahead of the taxable rate, you are profiting.
the shell companies are formed on paper only, usually in states or countries that charge just a few hundred for drafting and registering a company. Trump has hundreds of them, so does Manafort, so do the global oligarchs. The get away with it for a long time because tracking money thru 30 different shell companies is extremely difficult.
So the shell company "buys" or builds a hotel or a casino, whatever, with a check. The bank, for instance, agrees to a construction loan. Those type loans have a 5 year, or more, payback schedule.
the shell company hires workers to build, and since the russian mob took over in the 1990's, they get a cut for "allowing" the construction.
Ok, hotel, built. Condos in it are selling. Trump gets a % of the money by licensing his name, which used to be worth something until now.
He makes then makes a profit on it by heavily mortgaging it, and obviously some of the money, now clean, gets back to the money launderers.
But he never pays the mortgage back, just walks away when there is no more profit, or when he is sued for non-payment of the bills and loans.. which accounts for his many bankruptcies.
Business bankruptcies end up paying just pennies on all the bills that are owed, including the loans.
Which is why eventually all the big banks eventually refused to deal with him, and he started using Deutsch Bank, which has been charged more than once for ....money laundering.
For Trump, and Kushner, they live off the loan money. Every single time Kushner attempted to get more loans on his 666 building,
he SAID..out loud, where we could hear it on the news, that he was asking for millions, and that he planned to use part of any loan for living expenses. For some reason, he was refused the loans. gee..wonder why.
If you look at all of Trump's "failed" businesses, and there are dozens of them, you will find he got them off the ground by loans and/or investors. He's a salesman, pure and simple, and talks a good game, there are idiots with money to believe him.
And all those businesses fell by the wayside. But he kept the loan money.
BUT....when you pay taxes, as a person or a business, you get to deduct losses. Which is why Trump has bragged his bankruptcies have saved him millions in taxes.
I sold a house at a loss one year, and ended up paying pennies in taxes because of it. Multiply that times Trump and millions.
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