US President Donald Trump dances after speaking at a campaign rally to support Republican House of Representatives candidate Ed Gallrein and Senate candidate Andy Barr, at Truist Arena in Highland Heights, Kentucky, US, October 17, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Facing “one of the most significant tax bills of his life,” projected at more than $500 million, President Donald Trump set up a “charitable deduction” on a golf course he still owns that could let him write off roughly $825 million in income, a report says.
In a Forbes report published Monday, senior editor Dan Alexander described how the Trump Organization gave away the right to further develop Trump National Golf Club in Jupiter, Florida, in December 2025 but kept the club itself.
Alexander wrote that the president “appears to be using the presidency to get away with it.” Spokespeople for the White House and the Trump Organization did not respond to Forbes’ questions.
Trump’s return to the White House brought $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency earnings in 2025, plus more than $200 million from real estate, the outlet calculated. His projected tax bill “snowballed to over $500 million.”
To shrink that bill, the Trump Organization turned to a tool called a conservation easement, Forbes reported. The tax code lets landowners claim a charitable deduction for giving up the right to develop their land when that protects natural habitat, even if they keep the property.
In September 2025, an environmental nonprofit produced a 180-page report arguing that the Jupiter course’s wildlife and plant life merited protection, according to Forbes. Trump then donated the development rights to the Barn Group Land Trust. Forbes found six tax court cases involving aggressive deductions on easements donated to the same trust, including one in which investors turned a $1.5 million property into a $149 million donation. The trust’s CEO told Forbes it doesn’t get involved with appraisals.
The deduction’s size depends on valuing the course as if it would otherwise become luxury homes, a housing project that Forbes wrote was “invented just for an appraisal.”
Based on comparable past deals and interviews with eight industry experts, Forbes estimated that Trump could write off around $825 million, “give or take a couple hundred million.” The expected savings led Forbes to raise its estimate of his fortune by $300 million.
Trump has donated at least five such easements since 2005, and the IRS has challenged him over them before, according to Forbes. This time, the outlet noted, he controls the government on the other side of the dispute.
In January, a month after the Jupiter donation, Trump sued the IRS, alleging that it failed to protect his tax information during his first term, Forbes reported. The president was suing an agency inside his own government. “Anything I win, I’m giving 100% to charity,” he said.
“Anything I win, I’m giving 100% to charity,” he said.
The “payoff,” as Forbes called it, came in May, a month after the April 15 tax deadline, when the Justice Department released a settlement of the lawsuit. The deal bars the government from pursuing any claims against Trump, his family and their business arising from matters “already pending, or that could be pending.”
Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress the agreement does not cover Trump’s 2025 tax returns, according to Forbes, which wrote that a careful reading of the “could be pending” language suggests otherwise.
Because Trump appears to have gotten an extension on his 2025 taxes, Forbes wrote, he “could have pursued the most aggressive tax strategy imaginable over the last few months—believing the IRS could do nothing about it.”
A tax attorney who specializes in conservation easements told Forbes, “This explains so much about why he’s trying to get absolute IRS immunity. The whole thing makes sense now.”
A group of former IRS and Justice Department officials called the settlement “breathtakingly improper,” Forbes reported. Thirty-five former judges called the agreement “a product of collusion” and “a fraud on the court.” Thirty-five former judges called the agreement “a product of collusion” and “a fraud on the court,” according to Forbes.
In July, the federal judge overseeing the case ruled that it had been brought “to manipulate the judicial process,” Forbes reported. Trump is appealing.
A former IRS chief counsel executive told Forbes, “I’ve got a lot of friends who are career IRS, and I think they’re trying to do the right thing, but I don’t know what marching orders you get. I guess I don’t have confidence that they’re able to do the right thing.”
Ed Russo, whom Trump named to lead his Environmental Advisory Task Force, still consults for the Trump Organization on easements for three more courses at Trump National Doral in Florida, work that Forbes said could, in theory, shelter another $1 billion.
And two of the people with homes bordering the protected Jupiter fairways, Forbes reported, are Eric Trump and financial executive Frank Bisignano, who became CEO of the IRS late last year as the Trump Organization was putting the easement together.