Hothead actor and “Saturday Night Live” Donald Trump impersonator Alec Baldwin is also a tax dodger, a Manhattan gallerist claims in response to a lawsuit the star filed against her in September.
Baldwin sued Mary Boone saying the gallery owner tricked him into paying $190,000 for a counterfeit version of a painting he’d long coveted.
But in a response to that suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court Thursday afternoon, Boone reveals that the “30 Rock” star allegedly used a complex maneuver to avoid paying $16,000 in New York state sales tax on the Ross Bleckner artwork “Sea and Mirror.”
“Mr. Baldwin was able to avoid paying sales tax by having the painting shipped from New York to California shortly after purchasing it, even though the true destination was New York all along,” according to a statement released by the gallery.
The filing cites bills and invoices tracing the alleged tax dodging trip the painting took.
“Mr. Baldwin’s efforts to bully Ms. Boone and his past failure to pay taxes suggest that he is even more like Donald Trump than what we have seen on ‘Saturday Night Live,'” Boone’s lawyer, Ted Poretz, quipped.
The response also says that Baldwin waited too long to sue since he bought the piece in 2010. It further argues that the suit is “frivolous” because the painting was an original, not a copy.
A lawyer for Baldwin called Boone’s response “remarkable in that she fails to deny that she sold Mr. Baldwin a counterfeit of the original painting that he long admired.”
“Ms. Boone’s diversionary tactics include that Mr. Baldwin waited too long to catch her deception. As for the desperate shipping and tax allegations, they do not merit a response,” said the lawyer, John Hueston.