Atypical? He bet that others in his situation were similarly undertaxed.
He issued his famous challenge :
With his followup:
Thanks, you just saved me a lot of typing. 
I gather from all these responses that this particular question has not been asked directly to Mr. Buffett.
As I understood the reason for the discrepancy: Mr Buffet’s income results primarily from dividends and capital gains on selling shares of stock. dividends and capital gains are taxed at a lower rate (15%) than normal earnings. As a result Mr B’s aggregate tax rate is less than the standard rate paid by his secretary.
This situation is often misinterpreted as a lower tax rate on ordinary income for high-wage earners. Not the case.
No, OP asked a loaded question, designed for no other purpose than
to try to make WB look bad.
I think it’s very likely that someone has already asked WB the question,
but since the question is so flagrantly ridiculous no one has bothered to
report the exchange.
The answer is that it would make no difference what WB donated, even
if he donated all of his assets, ~$35billion, considering that one year’s
*deficit is over 30 times as much. *
I am not going to look it up, but I would be willing to bet that even if every
millionaire in the country sent Treasury every cent to his name it would not
cover one year’s deficit.
Now, increasing taxes on the rich is not going to provide all the answers,
but I think WB’s point is that it is necessarily part of the answer. Of course
performing the essential is going to be difficult because a certain powerful
US political party of real strupid motherfuckers has decided to characterize
progressive income tax rates as a form of “class warfare”, a somewhat novel
objection, considering that every income tax going back to the Civil War
era has been progressive. I guess that’s a subject for another thread, though
so I won’t develop the thought any more here.
Your mind-reading skills are inadequate to the task. I genuinely was curious whether he had been asked, and what his response was. That’s all. I didn’t want to spark a big debate about taxation; if I had, I would have put my OP in GD. I didn’t want to make Mr. Buffett look bad; if I had, I would have put my OP in the Pit.
If you don’t know the answer to the question, it’s OK to plead ignorance or abstain from the discussion.
I don’t know if anyone asked him and if he answered, but I’d answer it thus: Of course, I could have my pitcher be the DH, and I could bat him anyplace in the lineup. But I couldn’t do a double switch, and I couldn’t put anyone else in that spot in the lineup without making that person the DH. I can’t just switch people around like they do in the NL. So it’s not as easy as the question indicates. If I could abandon the rule entirely, I’d do it, because the DH rule detracts from many aspects of the game, adding litte, but since just putting my pitcher in the batting order wouldn’t do that, fuggeddabout it.
The simple answer to “Why doesn’t Buffett pay more taxes” is: He takes a relatively small salary ($100k), and the majority of his income comes from investments which were taxed at 15%. Our current highest income rate is 35%.
Buffett has been involved in persuading billionaires to give away half their fortunes:
No need to try to read minds when I run across something like this:
“Some of his detractors have noted, quite correctly”
You know what “detractor” and “correctly” mean, don’t you? Using them
together as you did establish that you have made up your mind that the
answer incriminates WB. Therefore the question was not an honest one,
but was loaded.
While the OP asked a question which could be answered in a factual manner, it WAS rather loaded and probably deserves to be moved to IMHO, which I have done. It doesn’t rise to a Great Debate to me.
samclem Moderator
It is a silly question. Confiscating all his wealth would not permanently fix the deficit. He is representative of many millionaires and billionaires who have had seriously lowered tax rates for the last couple decades. He thinks they all should pay a fairer share. That is pretty easy to understand.
“Detractor” is the correct word to describe the people who have claimed it’s possible for him to hand over more money than his 1040 requires. I have not heard his supporters making this claim.
“Correctly” means only that they have made an accurate truth claim: it is indeed possible for him to hand over more money than his 1040 requires.
When I post questions in GQ, it’s typical for me to offer some background before actually posing the question, and that’s all I was attempting to do here.
If Mr. Buffet, me or anyone over pays their tax bill as per the OP, won’t the IRS see that as an over-payment and send him a refund check? The only way to prevent this would be to increase the tax burden, not just ask people to volunteer to send in more money.
I expect you wouldn’t want to send the extra funds in with your 1040 form. Here are two other options:
Gifts to Reduce the Public Debt: this fund received almost $3M last year.
That’s the whole point, though. “Ordinary income for high-wage earners” is primarily dividends and capital gains, precisely for this reason. Buffet is pointing out how little the top income tax bracket actually matters because of the various routes that the typical top income flows though, and using that to criticize the recent discussions of top end tax breaks by demonstrating that the situation they address (high taxes on the wealthy) doesn’t even exist.
You’re missing the point, OP.
Your title poses the question: Why doesn’t Warren Buffett pay more taxes?. That’s not at all the same as what you now pretend your “genuine curiosity” to be.
You didn’t answer my first hypothetical about Larry Dolan and the Designated Hitter rule. Try one of these:
- Joe Blobble thinks he should pay less taxes. Why doesn’t he? Should he, if he knows the odds are he won’t be audited?
- Jason Grimpson thinks the red light at Grand and 7th should be timed differently. Why doesn’t he run the light, when red, if it’s a time when he thinks it should be green?
Try answering one of these, and see if you can wrap your mind around the fallacy you’re making. Hope this helps.
I disagree. Buffet could easily try to lead by example and pay the amount of tax he thinks he should pay. He’s doing something similar by trying to get the world’s billionaires to pledge to leave their fortunes mostly to the public when they die, and he’s got quite a few people signed up.
It’s exactly the same. He asked why Buffet doesn’t pay more taxes. The most logical way to find out is to see if someone has asked him that and what his response was. Why would he be interested in what you, or anyone else, thinks Buffet’s response would be? You can’t read Buffet’s mind. And given how much Buffet has harped on this subject, I think it is very reasonable to expect that someone has asked him this question.
:rolleyes: I apologize for poorly wording the subject line. However, if I really were asking for people to hypothesize about why tax rates for Mr. Buffett are what they are, I would have left the body of the OP blank and let the title stand on its own. The title is necessarily an incomplete, imperfect summary of the substance of the OP, with full expression to be found within the body of the OP.
At worst, my title is ambiguous. Consider this revision, which more clearly expresses what I had in mind: “Why doesn’t Warren Buffett voluntarily pay more taxes right now?”
Most people place at least some value on following the rule of law, even if they don’t fully agree with it. Mr. Buffett could choose to give more money to the government right now, and he would still be in full compliance with the law.
…someone needs to ask him why his company has been in court for the last few years trying to get out of paying about 1 billion in taxes.