11-25-2016, 01:49 PM
(11-25-2016, 11:55 AM)Mikebert Wrote:Warren Dew Wrote:Billionaires pay virtually no taxes. Warren Buffett pays an effective tax rate of less than one tenth of one percent. See this article from the WSJ for a numerical analysis:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB1000142405...1587258988
The idea that people rich enough to buy politicians would allow those politicians to charge them taxes is naive in the extreme.
The link you provided is paywalled. Here is one from Forbes:
http://fortune.com/2016/10/10/warren-buffett-taxes-trump/
It shows Buffet paid taxes:
Adjusted gross income: $11.6 million [$0.01 billion]
Deductible charitable contributions: $3.5 million
Total deductions: $5.5 million
Federal income tax paid: $1.8 million [$0.002 billion]
Buffet’s tax bill does amount to less than a tenth of percent of his net worth, but it is 30% of his his taxable income of 6.1 million.
The key word there being the "taxable" in "taxable income".
As discussed in my link, Buffet's net work increases by on the order of $10 billion - not million, billion - per year. By any reasonable psychohistorical or "cliodynamical" analysis, that counts as income, as it increases Buffet's ownership share and control of the world through his personal holding company. That fact that well over 99% of his income is nontaxable just proves my point. His effective tax rate is less than a tenth of a percent.