After businesswoman Ivana Trump died of blunt impact injuries following a fall down a flight of stairs in her Manhattan home, her ex-husband, former President Donald Trump, had her buried at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster in Bedminster, New Jersey.
And it looks like he might have done it for the tax breaks.
After news outlets like Insider reported that the New Jersey state tax code states that any land that is dedicated to cemetery purposes is exempt from all taxes, rates, and assessments, people wondered if Trump family businesses stood to financially benefit from her final resting place.
The story caught the attention of Dartmouth University professor Brooke Harrington, who has researched tax codes extensively.
Sure enough, she found the New Jersey tax code is "a trifecta of tax avoidance," noting burying the ex-Mrs. Trump on the grounds of the golf course would make the business exempt from property, income and sales taxes.
The New Jersey tax code also states that cemetery companies are also exempt from real estate taxes, rates, and assessments or personal property taxes on their lands.
But it goes even further, exempting them from business taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, and inheritance taxes.
The news angered the Trump family's critics, who suggested the story is further indication of the family's history of greed.
Trump had long considered constructing a mausoleum on the property, and an NPR report from 2012 noted that the proposal, which was later expanded to include a cemetery of more than 1,000 graves, had received considerable pushback from locals.
The news comes after Trump made headlines for using his golf course to host the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf tournament, a move that prompted protests from the families of victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The news angered many who'd noted that Trump had echoed the opinion of the intelligence community that the Kingfom of Saudi Arabia had backed the Al-Qaeda plot to fly airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
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