Wednesday, October 12, 2011

What's Warren Buffett Hiding on His Income Tax Form?

In a letter to Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp, Warren Buffett revealed that his adjusted gross income last year was $62,855,038 and that his taxable income was $39,814,784. Buffett said he paid $15,300 in payroll taxes.

Buffett also said his federal income tax bill came to $6,923,494, or 17.4% of his taxable income.

Buffett provided a copy of his correspondence with Huelskamp to CNNMoney's Poppy Harlow.

Since calls have been made for Buffett to release his income tax form, given that he is proposing for higher taxes based on the fact that he says his taxes are too low. It is odd that Buffett has decided to go with this limited hang out. The immediate question that comes to mind is, what is Buffett hiding?

In his letter, according to CNN, Buffett also repeated his offer to release his full tax return if other super-wealthy taxpayers -- like News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch -- did the same. Since Murdoch and most other wealthy tax payers are not calling for an increase in taxes, this is a peculiar pre-requisite that Buffett has set to trigger his releasing his tax forms.

8 comments:

  1. Id like to know how much Buffet and Berkshire Hathaway spends on CPAs and tax attorneys to pay the least amount of taxes.

    If he really wanted to pay more taxes he wouldnt spend a dime on them.

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  2. Maybe he should reveal what handouts he gets under the guise of railroad subsidies as well. And what's his angle on Estate tax?

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  3. Wouldn't it be ironic if he was hiding something after all the support he gave to the tax increase among "job creators"?

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  4. He has no CPAs. Did you bother to read the NYTimes article? He gives away 99% of his income anyway; he's also not making anything up. He just believes in a different ideology than other billionaires, like Charles Koch's response puts in a nutshell.

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  5. I do not know the motive of this self sacrifice for billionaires in paying more taxes in adjustment. Something is amiss.

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  6. Warren Buffett is entitled to every method of tax avoidance available to the rest of us. The thing that we do not have the political will to do is to remove the avoidance avenues that we have encoded in tax law. Mr Buffett appears willing to pay what he must. The Great Republican Argument is that taxes are bad things for those who have it all. When I see the stores of cash hoarded by our major corporations released into the jobs stream, then I will be more likely to listen to such arguments.

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