Researchers say the decision to bury former President Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana, in a plot at the Trump golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, likely resulted in a tax break.
Dartmouth College economic sociology professor Brooke Harrington stirred debate about the move by tweeting about it over the weekend and sharing a screen grab of New Jersey law that governs cemetery plots.
“It’s a trifecta of tax avoidance. Property, income & sales tax, all eliminated,” Ms. Harrington wrote.
Ivana Trump, who was born in the Czech Republic, was Mr. Trump’s wife during his rise to fame from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. She is the mother of Mr. Trump’s three eldest children, and died at age 73 on July 14 after falling down stairs at her home.
She was buried in a plot close to the first tee of the golf course at Bedminster, according to The Daily Mail, although the burial plots are not a sudden revelation.
There have been numerous media reports about Mr. Trump’s decision to plan a series of plots, including one for himself, at the Bedminster location.
A 2017 Washington Post feature story said Mr. Trump thought of Bedminster as his favorite property. He also told the New York Post in 2007 that it made sense to plan burial plots there because it is beautiful land in one of the richest parts of the country.
Experts pointed out that Mr. Trump previously qualified for farming tax breaks on the land, which produces mulch for gardening.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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