Former President Donald Trump is set to see his taxes go down next year as his Financial District property drops in value.
The value of the 72-story office tower at 40 Wall St. — dubbed The Trump Building — saw a 29% decline, hitting $130M, a drop-off that will likely shave $1.7M off Trump's tax bill, Bloomberg reports.
This building is not alone — offices around the city are seeing a devaluation as the coronavirus pandemic continues to upend the office market. The dip in this case, however, follows a precipitous property valuation drop over the past five years.
Bloomberg put the building’s value at $550M in 2016. It dipped to $400M by 2017 and by September 2020, its value hit $262M. The building’s revenue dipped approximately 11% between 2019 and 2020, based on reporting of revenue from the first three quarters of 2020, per Bloomberg.
To add to its woes, Girl Scouts of America, which signed a 15-year, 17,500 SF lease in the building in 2014, began looking to get out of its lease to sever business ties with the former president after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Business Insider reported. Another tenant, TB Alliance, was also looking for a way out, Forbes reported in January.
The Trump Building's taxes took on notoriety after a 2019 ProPublica investigation revealed that the real estate billionaire president had inflated the building’s expenses and underreported the building’s income on tax documents.
The building, which was constructed in 1930, has been highly important in Trump’s portfolio since he bought it in 1995 for around $8M. This price has been disputed over the years. He invested $35M in redeveloping the building, which was 89% vacant at the time of the deal, The New York Times reported. He infamously boasted on television that it was the tallest building in Lower Manhattan after the attacks of 9/11.
