I would be pro-Buffett Rule...

JCash

JCash

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Nov 25, 2010
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If the Buffett Rule was "You can stiff the IRS for over a billion dollars" for everyone, not just Warren Buffett.

Update: Warren Buffett’s Company Owes Nearly $1 Billion in Taxes | TheBlaze.com

How is this guy writing about the rich should pay more taxes when his own $300+ billion dollar company is trying to weasel out of paying over a billion dollars of taxes accrued over 10 years?

I'm moving to Thailand, the random urine tests and arbitrary search and seizure (Dos And Donts In Thailand - Bangkok Times Online) are a small price to pay for freedom.
 


10:45 :

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQYy25kLijA"]The truth about rising gas prices, the stock market, & Warren Buffett's taxes - YouTube[/ame]
 
Buffet has the fiduciary responsibility to manage the fiscal burden of the companies that he owns and/or manages so as to hold said burden to the lowest possible amount. So while he may advocate the imposition of higher taxes, to quote Judge Learned Hand, "Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible."

So good for Buffett for fighting, within the regulations at the time, to reduce taxes to be paid. This has nothing to do with the so-called Buffett Rule, it is only petty jealousies exhibited by people wanting a free ride or too stupid or lazy to succeed.
 
buffett himself is not a fan of the "buffett rule". his comment that started all this was that the super-rich (billionaires) should be taxed more... obama just lifted buffett's name and put it on his own agenda.

i'm i huge buffett fan, i wish he'd been more careful with protecting his image and not let it be whored out.
 
JCash said:
No, it is incongruous for Citizen Buffett to call for higher tax rates while CEO Buffett helms a company that's being sued by the IRS Private jets, Warren Buffett and tax lawsuit - Economic Times

Corporations should pay their fair share first.
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with that IRS thing, its just a disagreement in terms of tax owed, and the IRS begins all large disagreements with a lawsuit that needs to be defended.

warren buffett is not in any way dishonest... he's probably the most honorable & honest buisnessman in america... and i suspect that in this case the IRS will be found to be in error.

yes, he's that sharp & that honest. hard to believe but true.
 
With inflation calculated in, muffins could go up from $16.00 to $20.00, shrimp would go from $4.00 to $9.00 and junkets to Vegas for government workers could rise from $820,000 up to maybe $1,500,000 !

We are going to need a LOT of new taxes to cover it. Yea Buffet rule!
 
Don Geiss said:
Buffet is such a large player, it would make sense for him to want higher taxes. That way, the smaller players can't compete with his big money, and other big money players like him. He's trying to raise the barrier of entry for investors. That means more for him, less for us plebeians.
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that logic would make sense for say, donald trump, but all buffett cares about in terms of business is the share price... that's his game, and make no mistake, its a game to him. his presonal tax rate means nothing to him because his salary is roughly $150k per year. so to say he'd suggest that billionaires should be taxed more for personal gain doesn't hold alot of water.
 
drave said:
with that IRS thing, its just a disagreement in terms of tax owed, and the IRS begins all large disagreements with a lawsuit that needs to be defended.

warren buffett is not in any way dishonest... he's probably the most honorable & honest buisnessman in america... and i suspect that in this case the IRS will be found to be in error.

yes, he's that sharp & that honest. hard to believe but true.
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His personal morals and ethics don't come into play, to me it's the same as Steve Jobs being all green-energy sustainable-future when jacking his jaw at various universities at the same time Apple was polluting and abusing the environment in China.
 
JCash said:
His personal morals and ethics don't come into play, to me it's the same as Steve Jobs being all green-energy sustainable-future when jacking his jaw at various universities at the same time Apple was polluting and abusing the environment in China.
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good reply. the difference is what jobs did vs. what you assume buffetts agenda to be. let it play out, i'll certainly give you props if you wind up being on the right end of this.
 
Ahahahaha I laughed my balls off at this:

"$1 billion is not an insignificant chunk of change, even for Buffett, representing about 0.2 percent of the company’s $372 billion in total assets."

0.2 percent rofl wtf why doesn't he just buy the south and we can have a new civil war
 
JCash said:
If the Buffett Rule was "You can stiff the IRS for over a billion dollars" for everyone, not just Warren Buffett.

Update: Warren Buffett’s Company Owes Nearly $1 Billion in Taxes | TheBlaze.com

How is this guy writing about the rich should pay more taxes when his own $300+ billion dollar company is trying to weasel out of paying over a billion dollars of taxes accrued over 10 years?
Click to expand...

If Buffett was the sole owner of the company he manages, you would have an excellent point.

But he's not - it's a publicly quoted company with lots of shareholders - and those shareholders have rights too.

If Buffett wants other shareholders to pay more tax, then the proper way to go about it is to lobby to change the law - which he is doing. What a law abiding CEO can't do is unilaterally increase the taxes of the other shareholders in his company just because he feels like it. Can you see the problem with your stance?

FWIW, on tax, I believe that taxes on earnings under $500,000 should be very low - all studies show that the economy jumps ahead when taxes are cut for people under this income, mainly because they usually spend most of their net earnings.

For people earning above this though - they can't spend it, so it doesn't trickle down. What they do instead is use the money to speculate - and they usually lose their money, especially when too much speculative money is chasing too few investment opportunities. And in the process of speculating they wreck the real economy too - from about 2000 onwards it suddenly because fashionable to diversify into oil speculation, and where previously the bulk of oil trades used to be real purchases for delivery, now 95% of the trades are closed before delivery, they are just speculative punts. Same thing with grains and other food stuffs. And of course with financial instruments.

It's caused global inflation (and a few years ago, actual starvation in poorer parts of the world when the grain prices soared).And that's aside from the financial wreck that was created. And who has to pick up the tab? Those earning under $500k.

So tax the people over this threshold - they'll lose the money anyway in speculation. (How many Forbes billionaires have made their money via speculation, apart from Buffett? None. They make their money from running real businesses, and the speculators usually end with a big fat zero or even losses - only the house wins when you gamble). So there is no difference to their final wealth whether it is taxed or lost in speculation, but at least the real economy is protected and the tax can be used to pay off debt or build some infrastructure, and making speculation more difficult will control inflationary pressures on oil and other critical stuff by draining the hot money out of the system.
 
Don Geiss said:
Well, I will concede I don't actually know his agenda. Neither do you, unless you are him. However, that doesn't mean my point doesn't still stand. If the rule went into effect, it would make it harder to become as wealthy as Buffet. His personal income vs. business income is a legal distinction, it's still his money/company. He's rich as hell. Anyone making >$1M USD would be taxed at 30%... I'm pretty sure it's a lot more money to a person that isn't a billionaire like him. Although I'm sure Obama has taken it a lot further than Buffett originally proposed, it's still a new obstacle to climbing socioeconomic levels no matter how it's twisted.

Consider this: Obama spends a lot of time talking about this rule, and Buffett supports it. If implemented, it would account for about 0.4% of the 2012 deficit. Yes, that's right, less than 1%. Yet, with the amount of spotlight and time devoted to this by Obama, you would think this cures cancer. It seems to me, this is more a political move by Obama than an actual attempt at tax reform. (Congress is WORTHLESS btw)
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as i said before, buffett doesn't support it.

but yes, its purely political horseshit.
 
Taxing the rich more may make us feel good, but it won't solve the deeper problems. Even if we seized the wealth of every rich person in America, it wouldn't be enough to keep up with the insane level of spending that we've been engaging in.

No household could function if it consistently spent more than it brings in. Governments are no exception.
 
I liked Buffet for a while, until I listened to his rants on the US gov credit rating, gold, and then the Buffet tax. Then he even had the nerve to try to do a pump and dump with BAC. It's obvious he isn't ignorant of what use gold has and how the books of the US gov are an abomination so it's kind of obvious he is just playing the system and his comments are disingenuous.

BTW, I was watching the interview when he said he and every other rich person should pay more tax so I don't understand why people are saying he is not in favor of it when he said it.
 
His company also cashed in (rail roads) for messing with the oil pipeline. (moving oil on rail instead of the pipeline.... pipeline costs less to move the oil by the way)
He makes bank... while saying he wants to raise his taxes.. lol

There is a law in place where you can just send in money to the gov. if you want.
Find the tax rate you like, and send it in love ! Its not illegal... lol what a joke.
 
teatree said:
If Buffett was the sole owner of the company he manages, you would have an excellent point.

But he's not - it's a publicly quoted company with lots of shareholders - and those shareholders have rights too.

If Buffett wants other shareholders to pay more tax, then the proper way to go about it is to lobby to change the law - which he is doing. What a law abiding CEO can't do is unilaterally increase the taxes of the other shareholders in his company just because he feels like it. Can you see the problem with your stance?
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Paying a company's tax bill doesn't increase the taxes of shareholders in a company, and there's no other problem with my stance. Buffett is CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, and with Charlie Munger, his vice-chair, they have a voting majority, so they can dictate settlement in full with the IRS. Buffett's financial position in Berkshire Hathaway is sufficient that he could quit less than 1% of his shares and mandate the proceeds be used to settle all potential back taxes. Berkshire Hathaway is not like your normal, publicly-traded, 300 billion dollar company. It's essentially a cotton mill turned one-man-mutual fund built on opportunistic investing, a vampire entity feeding on failure, from upside-down insurance companies in the 60's to the recent bailouts of speculative banks. One Class A share of Berkshire Hathaway costs over $100,000, and peaked above $150,000. It's a big Rube Goldberg-esque contraption of industries, securities, and financial instruments that the richest in the world treat like a giant sandbox filled with incorporated toys and money. My argument is that the billionaires' toy, in a world where the global economy has been minutes from meltdown twice and digital runs on banks have occurred faster than a human could react to them, the corporate essence of the billionaires has a moral and ethical responsibility to good global citizenship in their home country long before the American individual should pony up a penny more. And Berkshire Hathaway is only the worst offender, companies like GE also fight tooth and nail to keep money from the IRS, from just not paying hundreds of millions of dollars to lobbying for tax loopholes that benefit corporations. The billionaires that aren't paying their fair share are the corporations, not the people.
 
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