Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Warren Buffett Totally Destroyed on His Supposed Tax Views

Adam White writes in response to Warren Buffett's op-ed in NYT:
Buffett opens this one with a rifle shot at Grover Norquist specifically, and supply-side economics generally: 
Suppose that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. “This is a good one,” he says enthusiastically. “I’m in it, and I think you should be, too.” 
Would your reply possibly be this? “Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you’re saying we’re going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent.” Only in Grover Norquist’s imagination does such a response exist.
Then White goes in for the kill:
It's a catchy opener, attracting headlines and guffaws from the expected quarters. But I'm struck by his opener because I can think of at least one real-world example in which a rich investor nearly spiked a deal due to taxes: Warren Buffett himself, as recounted in Alice Schroeder's terrific biography, The Snowball (pages 230-232).

Early in his career, Buffett invested heavily—almost one third of his early fund's capital—in Sanborn Map, a company that mapped utility lines and such. But he soon grew frustrated with the company's leadership, which "operated more like a club than a business," and which refused to return greater dividends to investors. So Buffett amassed more and more stock, and with control of the company finally in hand he pressed the board of directors to split the company in two (one for the mapping business, and one to hold the company's other outsized investments).

Finally, the board capitulated. But with victory finally at hand, Buffett nearly scuttled the deal because of ... taxes. As Schroeder recounts, quoting Buffett, one director proposed that the company just cleanly break the company, despite the tax consequences—"let's just swallow the tax," he suggested.

To which Buffett replied (as he recounted to Schroeder):

And I said, 'Wait a minute. Let's -- "Let's" is a contraction. It means "let us." But who is this us?  If everyone around the table wants to do it per capita, that's fine, but if you want to do it in a ratio of shares owned, and you get ten shares' worth of tax and I get twenty-four thousand shares' worth, forget it.'

Buffett was willing to walk away from a deal because the taxes would have taken too much of a bite out of it.

But, White's not done. He takes another major league shot at Buffet that totally destroys the argument Buffett made in his op-ed:
That's not the only time that taxes played a major role on Buffett's decisions, as recounted by Schroeder. Later in the book (pp. 533-534), she recounts how Buffett chose to structure his investments under Berkshire Hathaway's corporate umbrella, rather than as part of his hedge fund's general portfolio, precisely because of the tax advantages.
In fact, as he explained in his 1986 letter to investors, changes in the 1986 tax reform act posed a specific threat to certain investment decisions: 
If Berkshire, for example, were to be liquidated - which it most certainly won’t be -- shareholders would, under the new law, receive far less from the sales of our properties than they would have if the properties  had been sold in the past, assuming identical prices in each sale. Though this outcome is theoretical in our case, the change in the law will very materially affect many companies. Therefore, it also affects our evaluations of prospective investments.  Take, for example, producing oil and gas businesses, selected media companies, real estate companies, etc. that might wish to sell out. The values that their shareholders can realize are likely to be significantly reduced simply because the General Utilities Doctrine has been repealed - though the companies’ operating economics will not have changed adversely at all.  My impression is that this important change in the law has not yet been fully comprehended by either investors or managers.
That last point is key: When taxes change, would-be investors will certainly change their decisions about where to direct capital, even "though the companies' operating economics will not have changed adversely at all." Buffett saw this clearly in 1986, with respect to Berkshire's own investment decisions; it's hard to believe that Buffett no longer believes that today, with respect to private investors.

6 comments:

  1. Major point missing in various arguments, is not merely that higher taxes may affect decision-making, but due to higher taxes, the entrepreneurs/investors, have LESS money, to invest in various deals.

    Thus, the result of higher taxes (on prior deals,) takes its toll, regardless of the opinions/thoughts, of the investor.

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  2. Beautiful. Buffett is a moron, a crony capitalist and embarrassment to his late father. I hope this hypocrite gets creamed and this article gets appended to his op-ed just to show how foolish he is.

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  3. Buffet is full of it when he says taxes don't matter in a deal. I am a CPA and worked in the Big 8/6/4 and can tell you first hand that taxes DO MATTER in EVERY DEAL! When guys like Buffet do a deal, they have an IRR that has to be met on their capital. You cannot calculate the IRR of an investment without considering one of the largest outflow items, namely taxes! Never, in all the M&A related financial forecasts that I did, was I ever told to ignore the impact of tax consequences. To do so would be stupid as hell. It just blows me away that Buffet would make such a stupid statement. He sounds like one of those economically illiterate DNC convention Democrats that Peter interviewed. This is not the same Buffet that I grew up in total awe of his business acumen. The man has lost it!

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  4. Being a crony capitalist comes with a price tag. Clearly Buffett has crunch the numbers and realizes his bottom line will benefit more from being Obama's economic spokesperson than it will be hurt by higher taxes. It's a nice gig if you can get it. Always remember, "Nobody hates capitalism more than capitalists."

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  5. Buffet's comments could also be understood not so much as that taxes don't matter at all, but that in a low-interest rate environment, increases in capital gain taxes will not reduce the incentive to invest. The idea is that even with a 30% capital gains rate, an investment with a healthy return still beats parking the cash with a negative real rate. That's merely a truism, of course, and ignores the effects of competing tax jurisdictions among other things. I'm not arguing for higher rates, just pointing out a less strawman-ish way to interpret Buffet's comments.

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  6. Finally! Some sensible explanation in the midst of all this Buffet bashing...

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