Trump suing city for $500 million.

Donald Trump has added a new wrinkle to the city tax assessor scandal by filing a $500 million lawsuit against the city, alleging that Trump World Tower was taxed at an unfairly high rate to compensate for buildings that received lowball assessments.

Trump also said he is planning to sue the building owners that benefited from the corruption scandal, a charge that has some in the industry fuming.

"People are amazed by the outrageous statements he's making," said Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York Inc., who is serving as the spokesman for building owners.

Trump is suing the city seeking to lower property taxes at Trump World Tower on First Avenue across from the United Nations from $11.6 million to $7.01 million annually, but is also seeking $500 million in damages. He said the high taxes lowered the value of the condominiums and forced him to sell them at artificially low prices.

Trump's lawsuit cites the testimony of Andrew Cuomo, a former tax assessor who said that values on some properties were raised to disguise the lower assessments of others.

"(My supervisor) told me that in order to protect the situation that we were in, he would raise values on many particular properties, so they wouldn't have to do much with the other values on the properties that people were getting money for," Cuomo testified.

Cuomo, however, did not name specific properties that were being assessed at higher levels.

Trump said that .his building was assessed at $149 a SF, far higher than comparable properties. As examples, he cited Sterling Plaza at 255 East 49th St., which was assessed at $75.49 per SF; 100 United Nations Plaza, which was assessed at $80.59 per SF; and the Vanderbilt at 235 East 40th St., which was assessed at $72.65 per SF, according to court papers dated Oct. 21.

The lawsuit states that the city assesses cooperatives and condominiums on a capitalization of income formula using market rents and, for the Trump World Tower, the city used "the highest estimates of market rents which are substantially and unjustifiably higher than any comparable property. As examples, he cited 860 United Nations Plaza, West Tower, which was assessed at $55.60 per SF in the tax year 2002/2003 and 870 United Nations Plaza, East Tower, which was assessed at $55.60 per SF for the same period, according to court papers.

"The unequal, excessive and illegal assessments on the Trump property is an attempt to assess and add value because of the entrepreneurial value and value enhancement of the developer , Donald J. Trump, attached to the project which is intangible personal property and not assessable as real property," court documents state.

In February, 18 tax assessors were indicted for taking bribes in exchange for lower tax bills, a scheme that cost the city $40 million a year in lost revenues. At the center of the scandal is 86-year-old Albert Schussler, a real estate consultant who many of the building owners hired. Fifteen of the 18 current and former assessors indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan have pleaded guilty. Schussler and two other men are set to go on trial in January.

The owners of the 562 Manhattan properties that benefited from the scandal -- a list that include prominent apartment building owners such as Sheldon Solow, the Resnick family and Leonard Litwin -- have said they were unaware of any wrongdoing on Schussler's part. When reached for comment, Solow and Resnick referred the call to Spinola.

Among Trump's most volatile claims is that it is impossible for building owners not to have known what Schussler was doing, a charge owners vehemently deny. Spinola is quick to point out that no owners have been indicted in connection with the scandal.

"There is no evidence that any owner knew what was going on," he said. "This is the kind of statement that is meant to grab headlines."

He stated further that owners would be happy to respond to any lawsuit Trump files against them.