Mr. Buffett and the Unknown Advisor Differ on That!

"Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary." He did not pay less than his secretary. He made $46 million and paid 17.7 percent, or $8,142,000 in tax. She is said to have made $60,000 and to have paid 30 percent in tax, or $18,000. Hmmm, now, eight million is more than eighteen thousand.

He apparently did pay a smaller percentage of his income in taxes than she did. So what. Presumably, he used every trick the tax code allows, and well, the cost of those things is typically lower investment performance. So he traded some investment performance away for lower taxes. I would too. So would you. Also, we are dealing here with capital, not wages. His salary, being greater, would indeed have been taxed at a higher rate. Buffet is being mendacious here. He knows all this, he just wants you to have higher taxes, to build a new age of big government, funded by big tax rates, under his favorite Presidential candidate, whose initials are HRC.

If taxes go up, investors will invest to have something left after taxes, rather than to maximize their long term gains. So our investment outcomes will suffer. Then we will all eat cat food and cut pills in half in our old age, excepting him, Hillary and Bill. He'll still be able to afford his cheeseburgers, and to buy theirs also.


Buffett blasts system that lets him pay less tax than secretary - Times Online