Billionaire Warren Buffett says his secretary pays proportionately more in taxes than he does. What Buffett doesn't tell you is that he pays "Capital Gains" tax while his secretary is paying "Income" tax.
Cap gains is a double tax. First you pay federal income tax, and whatever you have left over that you want to invest is then taxed again as "Capital Gains"...if you make a profit on your investment. In fact, Buffett's secretary does not pay a higher tax rate than him because what Buffett also doesn't tell you is that he is the majority share holder of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. which pays 35% percent corporate tax. That's his money being taxed at 35%. Plus, Chairman and CEO Buffett CHOOSES not to work for a salary, if he did, he would be paying federal income tax just like his secretary, but at a higher rate. Of course, Buffett doesn't need a salary, yet, as a wacky billionaire, he is so disconnected from reality that he makes no consideration for those who do need a salary.
When Obama talks about the "Buffett Rule", saying, "Warren Buffett's secretary shouldn't pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett...the rich should pay their fair share", apparently this 44th President of the United States doesn't know the difference between cap gains and federal income tax. Or, he thinks you are too stupid to know the difference.
FACT: This year of 2011, those earning over $1 million will pay an average of 29.1% in federal taxes. Those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay 15%.
FACT: Those earning over $1 million are 0.2% of all U.S. tax filers. That's not even one percent of all U.S. income earners.
FACT: The top 1% of the richest people pay 38% of all federal taxes, the top 5% pay 58% of all federal taxes. The top 10% pay 70%.
FACT: Roughly, the bottom 47% of all wage earners pay no federal taxes at all.
The idea that the rich don't pay their "fair share" is total bullshit.
FACT: The top 2% of money earners are responsible for 33% of consumer spending in this country. What do you think will happen if that 33% shrinks? Businesses will have less money to create, expand, and hire. Our economy will shrink.
There is another name for rich people- "Job Creators". Rich people (the private sector) create jobs, not the Government. Government fills jobs where needed, but it doesn't create jobs where none existed before. Rich people, through innovation and investment actually create jobs that never existed, from the airline industry to Apple computers. If government bureaucrats knew how to spend money better than the rich, they wouldn't be bureaucrats, they'd be businessmen.
Obama has already has wasted a trillion dollars of tax payer money, and it hasn't done jack to lower unemployment because he hasn't learned the following lesson...
In the 90's Clinton and the democrats in congress were able to pass a luxury tax and then stood by and watched as droves of workers in the U.S. luxury industry lost their jobs because "Rich" people bought a lot less luxury items due to the tax. The U.S. spent more money on unemployment insurance for those people that lost their jobs than it raised in revenue from that stupid tax. And because of that, congress repealed it a couple years later. Going after wealthy luxury consumers only hurts blue collar luxury producers. The union that represents corporate jet aviation workers and manufacturers asked Obama to back off his corporate jet and luxury boat tax. A lesson from the 90's that Obama did not learn or did not want to learn because of his class warfare ideology. This, at a time when unemployment is over 9% I might add.
We need more taxpayers not more taxes. Of course we also need less wasteful government spending. But the only way you get more taxpayers is by letting the rich keep their money to invest in smarter ways than the government.
You cannot make the poor rich by making the rich poor, but it seems that socialists and most democrats want people to be equally poor than unequally rich. That's what the communists wanted, look how good that turned out for them.
Maybe the reason Warren Buffet is so obtuse on this issue is because he made his fortune investing, but not inventing. He never created a business from scratch. Maybe he is detached from how hard that is. He made a fortune capitalizing on what was already there, but never experienced what it took to create something that was never there. Perhaps it became so easy for him to manipulate what was already there, that he took for granted that it was there.
By the way, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is currently fighting the IRS to avoid paying 1 billion in back taxes. As John Hayward, writer for the conservative website HumanEvents.com put it, "...value of the time IRS agents have invested trying to collect it – they don’t work cheap, and we pay their salaries – and the resources Buffett’s people have invested fighting back. All of which would have been saved if Buffett simply practiced what he preached, and willingly handed over his fortune to the brilliant and compassionate 'leaders' he commands the rest of us to support without resistance...Warren Buffett is no different from the other liars and frauds orbiting Barack Obama. His hypocrisy just runs billions of dollars deeper. When it comes to 'shared sacrifice,' you do the sacrificing, and they do the sharing,..."
Not only does Buffett not have a grasp of what the free market needs to expand, it looks like he is also a sanctimonious phony. It seems this is another case of "Do as I say, not as I do" liberalism.
The Obama administration wants legislation to enact the "Buffett Rule" which calls for Americans who make one million dollars per year or more to pay at least 30% of their income in taxes. Obama says it would raise an estimated $47 billion over ten years. However, our debt is 1.3 Trillion. So even if it raised 47 billion this year, the debt would still be 1.253 Trillion. It does virtually nothing to fix the debt but it would do a lot more damage to small businesses, start ups, and people that need jobs. Businesses need those investment dollars to go to them so they can expand and hire, not to go to the government where it will be wasted on boondoggles like Solyndra.
Peter Schiff, the CEO of Euro Pacific Capital, put it very poignantly on Fox News' Huckabee, "...I'm already paying well over 40% of my income in federal and state income taxes...how much more do they wanna take?...medieval serfs only had to pay 25% of what they earned to the lord, I wish I could be elevated to the level of a serf."
The "Road to Serfdom" Hayek warned about is starting to look a lot like the road Obama has chosen for us.
~Dhruva Aliman