During the Trump years, Hunter Biden was paying about $50K/mo. to live in Biden’s Delaware beach house for a period of nearly a year (11 mos.)—even though Zillow shows that the most any other house in the area rented for was $6K/mo. Those rental payments totaled about $550K to the “Big Guy”. The house in question is probably worth a couple of million dollars.
What do the Biden tax returns show?
Before we venture off into the weeds of this problem, the classified document scandal continues to blow up in Biden’s face. The inconsistencies in the stories emanating from the DOJ and the White House are spreading a lot of egg-on-the-face problems. This issue with Hunter’s “rental” payments is going to add to that pile.
Before we even get started on the potential tax problems, let it be noted that Hunter Biden has claimed the house was owned by him. However, the tax and deed records say otherwise.
The Biden’s tax return (that’s Jill & Joe for 2018) show deductions for the property tax paid on the house as well as mortgage interest deductions. It is clearly not Hunter’s house.
Karl Denninger dives into the weeds of the taxes involved and the inherent problems surfacing in the return.
Joe’s tax returns from the subject year shows business income from pass-throughs (two S corps) which is perfectly legal. The tax returns do not show income in that classification from other sources; ergo, said “rental” has to be inside one of those two corporations or there is a serious felony involved, because that would be $600,000 of undeclared (and untaxed) income. Line 17 of Schedule 1 shows this and ties back from Schedule E, as it must. The other “business income or loss” from Schedule C is inconsequential in amount.
But this leads to a very serious question: There’s nothing wrong with an S corp owning property but does it not have to be titled into the corporation? It wasn’t; at all times material the house was owned by Jill and Joe Biden in their personal capacity. It was not in a trust of some sort nor was it retitled into an S-corp as there’s no record of either. That seems rather hinky but perhaps not. In any event rental property is very different than a personal residence in that with rental property there’s depreciation and all other manner of things you can deduct that isn’t true for a personal residence — but if you convert it back to a personal residence that gets recaptured which is something I’ve warned other people to be careful of.
Denninger goes on to ask the obvious questions. He does not leave it up to the reader to try to decipher this mess. Regarding the S-Corps, “Is the rental income from Hunter in there, and if so, how does the S-Corp, which I remind as a corporation must keep formal books of account and not lie in any material respect account for income from an asset it does not own?”
What happens if the income is not listed in the returns for the two S-Corps? Either it never existed and that would be Hunter Biden’s problem (fraud in supplying background financial info) or Joe & Jill Biden committed tax fraud since the income would not be declared anywhere in their tax returns.
$600,000 is not some small amount. This would be felony-level tax fraud.
Denninger notes:
Whether this is more confabulation of a drug-addled Hunter or was disclosure of “10% for the big guy” kicked back to his father under the table and either improperly buried in an S-Corp “profit” that never owned the asset in question and thus can’t do that or Joe and Jill got $600,000 worth of undeclared income and didn’t pay taxes on it is now the question that demands an answer. After all, tax cheating in that sort of size is serious business, felony-level serious, and is one of the few plausible explanations for what those documents disclose.
Assuming that the S-Corps show the income, the real question becomes were the S-Corps set up for a lawful purpose? Or was the purpose to launder a 10X above-market-rate payment for “rent” from Hunter? This can lead to all sorts of criminal liability for both Joe and Jill Biden.
The obvious question that continues to surface is why is this coming out now? Is Joe being given a strong hint that it is time for him to resign from the Presidency for “health reasons.” Did anyone notice that his cough is back and seems to be getting worse?