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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (686237)	11/27/2012 2:59:03 PM
From: longnshort	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583507

buffet does everything he can to avoid taxes, hell he's fight a 1 billion dollar tax bill now

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (686237)	11/27/2012 3:15:38 PM
From: Sdgla	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583507

I do not want anyone to pay more than they are required to by law. I can't stand hypocrisy either. Most of us want to be wealthy and most of us do not want a candy ass hypocrite as POTUS spewing BS in order to get elected. Pols will say anything to get into and stay in office in order to bilk ignorant taxpayers. And IMO $250K per year is not wealth. Borrowing trillions in order fund a Ponzi scheme should be rewarded with a prison sentence... Not reelection.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (686237)	11/27/2012 4:47:23 PM
From: longnshort	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583507

Watch What Warren Buffett Does, Not What He Says 4:16 PM, NOV 26, 2012 • BY ADAM J. WHITE Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts Warren Buffett is by now no stranger to the national debate over federal tax policy. In 2009, he penned a New York Times op-ed calling for "truly major changes in both taxes and outlays." Two years later, he returned to the Times with a widely publicized call for large tax increases on the "super-rich," noting that his own effective federal tax rate (17 percent) was far less than his employees' rates (ranging from 33 to 41 percent). President Obama liked the idea so much, he called for Congress to pass "the Buffett Rule" in his 2012 state of the union address. Given that long, well-publicized history, there isn't much news to be found in Buffett's latest Times op-ed this morning, calling once again for a minimum tax on millionaires. Except that 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. Related Stories Top 0.1 Percent Pays More Income Tax than Bottom 80 ... Don't Forget About the Payroll Tax Obama’s Tax Cut Hypocrisy Obama in 2010: Raising Taxes Will Lead to 'More Folks ... Romney Camp: Obama Reacts to 'Bad Economic News' with ... More by Adam J. White Not ‘Deregulation,’ But Smart Regulation Pursuing Hamiltonian Ends By Jeffersonian Means Marshalling Precedent: With Nod to Predecessor, ... States of (Fiscal) Emergency—and a Plan to Fix Them Jeffrey Toobin Rewrites Supreme Court History—And ... 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. Fortunately for him, the board gave in and allowed him to structure the deal that he liked, saving him from his own Norquistian response. 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.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (686237)	11/28/2012 1:13:51 PM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583507

4 Reasons Warren Buffett Is Wrong on Tax Hikes Amy Payne and Alison Acosta Fraser November 27, 2012 at 9:40 am 11091335 Commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.heritage.org%2F2012%2F11%2F27%2Fmorning-bell-4-reasons-warren-buffett-is-wrong-on-tax-hikes%2FMorning+Bell%3A+4+Reasons+Warren+Buffett+Is+Wrong+on+Tax+Hikes2012-11-27+14%3A40%3A37Amy+Paynehttp%3A%2F%2Fblog.heritage.org%2F%3Fp%3D110913 Let’s talk taxes. In a New York Times op-ed yesterday, famed investor and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett once again argued that the wealthy should be taxed more. This isn’t the first time Buffett has made the case for higher taxes, and it’s not the first time he’s been wrong. Here are four reasons he is wrong to push for tax hikes. 1. Buffett says tax hikes won’t hurt jobs. Fact: Tax hikes, especially those he espouses, hurt jobs. Buffett cites periods when tax rates were high and says that “Under those burdensome rates,” employment “increased at a rapid clip.” This country has an employment problem right now, and tax rates aren’t even as high as Buffett wants. The tax increases President Obama champions would hit small businesses that create jobs. According to Treasury figures, 1.2 million Americans who employ people are paying their taxes through the individual income tax, and they would be hit head-on. The amount that their taxes would go up could be roughly equivalent to one employee’s salary, meaning that’s one person they can’t hire in the new year. A study by Ernst and Young estimates that these tax hikes would kill 710,000 jobs. 2. Buffett says tax hikes won’t stop investors from investing. Fact: Any time you tax something, you get less of it. Buffett says: “So let’s forget about the rich and ultrarich going on strike and stuffing their ample funds under their mattresses if—gasp—capital gains rates and ordinary income rates are increased. The ultrarich, including me, will forever pursue investment opportunities.” Let’s think about what taxes are intended to do. The cigarette tax is intended to curb smoking. Proponents of a carbon tax want to curb the amount of carbon emissions we are producing. In Washington, D.C., a plastic bag tax is intended to curb the number of plastic bags people use. When you tax something more, people do less of it. This is how taxes work. It doesn’t change because the behavior being taxed is investing rather than smoking. 3. Buffett says the wealthy aren’t even paying a minimum tax. Fact: We already have an Alternative Minimum Tax. Buffett says, “We need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes.” We already have this. It’s called the Alternative Minimum Tax. As Heritage’s Curtis Dubay explains: Congress passed the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) in the early 1970s to ensure that a few high-income taxpayers did not reduce their tax liability too much by taking advantage of all the deductions, exemptions, and credits Congress put in the tax code. But Congress did not index for inflation the income threshold over which families qualify for this extra tax. So now Congress must annually “patch” the AMT by raising the threshold to correct this mistake. Even with the patch, the AMT still ends up falling on almost 4 million taxpayers; Congress initially intended for it to hit only a few hundred. But here’s where the rubber meets the road: “According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the top 1 percent of earners (those with incomes over $1.2 million in 2009) pay an effective tax rate on all federal taxes of 29 percent. That’s almost three times as high as the 11 percent average rate paid by the middle class.” The top 10 percent of earners in the United States already pay more than 70 percent of federal income taxes. To move forward in this debate, those who argue that we just need to “tax the rich” will have to get real. We can’t close the budget deficit by taxing the rich. Even though Buffett also claims… 4. Buffett says we need to raise taxes to bring in more revenue for the government. Fact: The problem is government spending, not government revenue. Buffett says, “Our government’s goal should be to bring in revenues of 18.5 percent of [gross domestic product] and spend about 21 percent of G.D.P.” Revenues are lower now today than normal, not because of tax rates, but because of the slow-growing economy. As the economy recovers, so will revenues. And they will continue to grow as the economy thrives. Why? Because more people are investing, saving, working, and enjoying higher wages. The nifty little benefit for the government of a strong, growing economy is that people pay more in taxes. But on to spending. The White House already estimates that federal spending will be 23.1 percent of GDP this year—well above Buffett’s target. But, unlike taxes—which will return to the historical levels Buffett aims for, spending will continue to spiral ever upwards. In 25 years, spending will be 35.7 percent of GDP. In 2025, the big three entitlements will gobble up a full 18.5 percent of GDP— the entire amount of revenue that Buffett would like to raise. In Buffett’s world, then, after funding entitlements, that leaves only 2.5 percent of GDP for everything else (assuming that interest rates don’t go through the roof). The fact is that ever-growing entitlements have put spending on a trajectory toward a European-level implosion. If they are not reined in, taxes on everyone will have to rise perpetually just to keep pace. While Warren Buffett is right about many things, he is wrong about tax hikes. Which leads us to the real questions: Why are we even talking about tax hikes? Where are the spending cuts? blog.heritage.org