OK, of course it's complex because it's taxation. I found an information sheet that says how it works. It comes from Florida Revenue, so it should be legit. It says:
*Market (or Just) Value: The property appraiser determines the market value of a parcel based on market activity prior to the assessment date.
Assessment Differential: The property appraiser ensures that annual value caps, established in the Florida Constitution, are applied to the market value (no
more than 3% increase for homestead residential property and 10% for commercial properties).
Assessed Value: The property’s market value with assessment differential for annual value caps applied
Exemptions: Reductions in property tax owed based on applying and qualifying for the exemption (e.g., homestead, military/veteran, etc.)
Taxable Value: The property’s assessed value with exemptions applied *
So let's be clear here. What we are talking about is here is 'Market (or Just) value. That is the property appraiser's opinion of the market value of the property. The assessed and taxable value are irrelevant to this discussion. I can find nothing that suggests other than it is an experts view of the market value - that is what the property would sell for. Another expert's view might be different, but a difference of 2,300% between them sounds unlikely. And it is, because the whole point is that this is not a case of two assessors coming to different conclusions about the same item. They were assessing different items. The tax appraiser was taxing a property on which there was a deed restrictions which meant that its only allowable use was as a private club. This results in a market valuation in which the market is only those wishing to run a private club. The bank assessors were given the value for, and assessed the value for a property with no deed restrictions, which could be used as a private residence, a hotel, split into condos or anything that they wanted to do with it. Such a property would sell into a much larger market and thus its market price would be much higher. Thus those higher valuations were fraudulently applied, because the deed restrictions were omitted from the loan applications and assessors' information.
No. They were both market values. It was simply that one valuer was valuing a property with deed restrictions and the other wasn't. So he did incriminate himself.
As I said, there was a pattern of fraud. In the case of the Trump Tower apartment the tax valuer was valuing a property with 1/3 the floor area of the property that the loan valuer was valuing. It's a simple, straightforward and evident fraud.
You don't get to decide on the legal remedy. It's the law that does that and the judge has to apply the law. However, good for Trump that you aren't the law, because your penalty would mean him losing something that is apparently worth $612M, whereas the judge only penalised him to the extent of $354M, so you would have been $258M more punitive than the judge was.
Let's look back at this thread, where you said
This attitude (though legally incorrect and irrelevant to a case where no-one is being charged with theft) seems to be somewhat at odds with what you've just said. Let's write it in the same language
See the contradiction?
The problem for you is that whilst theft is not an issue in the documents case, fraud in an issue in the NY case, and the laws under which the Trump organisation is charged do not require that anyone be harmed for the defendant to be liable. You might not agree with the law, but that is the law. So unfortunately it's no defence. Trump and his organisation have been tried according to the law, found liable according to the law and would expect to pay the penalty that the law prescribes.
