UPDATE: Unsurpisingly, the President referenced this column today in a speech.
I'm sure this article will be widely circulated and quoted. Buffett, of course, is known as "The Sage of Omaha" for his business acumen, and is the second richest man in the country. (He was de-throned as the richest man a number of years ago, by a guy named Bill Gates.)
Buffett is a big philanthropist, staunch Democrat, and believer in population control.
Anyway, his article has some misleading stats, like evidently comparing the percentage of his total income that he pays in taxes - 17.4% - with the marginal tax bracket of his employees.
In a nutshell, he believes that people earning over $1,000,000 a year should be paying at a raised tax rate - especially the mega-rich, who earn over $10,000,000 a year.
Here's an interesting paragraph:
Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.
OK. If you do the math in 1992, the super-rich paid approximately $4.935 billion in taxes. In 2008, they paid $19.543 billion - four times as much. Buffett's beef is that the percentage of income taken as taxes has dropped from 29.2 to 21.5. But maybe that's why the income and thus tax revenues went up!?!?
In any event, if 2008 high earners paid at 29.2%, the additional income tax paid to the govenment would have only been another $7 billion. Sounds like big money, but compared to the present budget deficit of 1.6 trillion dollars, it's barely a rounding error.
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