It’s the order in which the payments were made that you appear to have mixed up.
IIRC, Cohen became aware of the allegations from Stormy Daniels, and proceeded to negotiate an agreement, get it signed, and make full payment of $130,000 to Daniels on his own. Then he billed Trump for $180,000 in legal fees, knowing that receiving all of that money as legal fees (rather than separating out $130,000 as a non-taxable reimbursement) would boost his (Cohen’s) taxable income and cause him to incur additional federal and state (also maybe municipal?) taxes on the full 180k.
The point being, I still don't see where Cohen overpaid his NY State or Federal taxes.
And I don't see where Trump overpaid any taxes.
The IRS might challenge Trump regarding the payment and deduction of $180,000 for "unknown" or "unspecified" services rendered by Cohen, but I don't think they would get anywhere.
And it doesn't look like Cohen overpaid because any payment to Stormy Daniels wouldn't be a deductible expense to Cohen (if it was done on Trump's behalf).
I think Trump would have a hard time arguing that a payment to Daniels for an NDA (that looks like extortion by Daniels) would be tax deductible as a business expense. But I guess Trump could have argued that Daniels could damage his business brand if she spread her story (true or not) around...and that would make it a deductible expense.
Bottom line: This is not much of an issue for Alvin Bragg. Even the IRS would have had a hard time with it.
In fact, I'll bet the IRS went over this issue in an audit and concluded that there's no there, there.
Yeah the sequence of events is Cohen paid Daniels, and then Trump paid Cohen legal fees. The sequence is not the big deal.
The ‘big deal’ is that Trump got to write it all off as legal fees in that year. Technically, the payment for exclusive story rights would not be tax-deductible (or at least not fully tax deductible in a single year). It would be an asset purchase and I don’t know how you depreciate the value of story rights. If Trump wrote a comic book based on the story, he (or Cohen) could write off the payment against the profits from selling the comic book.
But there are several hurdles to jump through to make that “crime” stick. Cohen admits Trump never made the payment to Daniels so the premise that Trump tried to “interfere with an election” (which isn’t a crime in an of itself it seems) doesn’t wash. It was technically Cohen who did the interfering, but again not a crime I am aware of. It is a tax matter, an accounting matter, and if it sticks it’s barely a crime at all. It should result in a fine not 32 felony charges.