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"Twenty-six years ago, another President said that some of these tax loopholes, and I quote, 'made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. It’s time we stopped it.' That was 26 years ago. You know the name of that President? Ronald Reagan."

The Occupy Wall Street group at first glance seemed sensible and I even admired their ability to organize and promote their message. I assumed that their agenda was based on an anti corporate socialist system that has been unfair, corrupt and overly leveraged to prop up the wealthy institutions. I believe that we need to let the "too big to fail" fail. I believe that we cannot continually prop up the banks. I thought I was on the same page as the Occupy Wall Street group and it is easy to be deceived. Their message is a blurry message as...

CNBC: "Are you happy that the way it is being described. Is the program that the White House has presented a million dollars and over your program? " Warren Buffett: "Well, the precise program which will -- I don't know what their program will be. My program would be on the very high incomes that are taxed very low. Not just high incomes. Somebody making $50 million a year playing baseball, his taxes won't change. Make $50 million a year appearing on television, his income won't change. But, if they make a lot of money and pay a very low...

The GOP is making a concerted effort to pressure billionaire investment guru Warren Buffett to release his tax returns to the public. Republicans say Buffett — the public face of Obama’s proposed “Buffett rule” to increase taxes on the wealthy — needs to reveal his finances if his views on tax rates are going to serve as the basis for Obama administration policy. “Will Warren Buffett release his tax returns so we can see why he should be the standard for tax policy?” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) questioned in a tweet Thursday. “If he’s going to be the gold standard,...

Friend -- The critical September 30th fundraising deadline is the primary focus of the campaign for the next week and a half, but two things happened this week that you ought to be proud of: -- President Obama laid out the Buffett Rule: a proposal to help bring down our deficit by asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share in taxes. It's a position that more than 70 percent of Americans agree with, but something that too many millionaire politicians don't have the guts to propose. -- "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" officially became history. It's done. That's something...

While Obama and Buffet are working on finding new ways to fleece middle class America of more of our money to finance the salaries of the new storm troopers, the SEIU, Teamsters and Teacher’s unions and the various ACORN spawned organizations, the two are simultaneously prosecuting an all out war on the private sector. To hear the old kook tell it the idea came to him while he was playing in the bathtub. Those of us who no longer believe in the tooth fairy prefer to to dig a little and find out just exactly how did this seemingly Archimedian...

This week, President Obama announced a new way for the government to make more money: put a floor on the tax rates that millionaires face. He coined the idea the "Buffett Rule,"... [Snip] So how much would the so-called Buffett Rule bring in? It's hard to say, because Obama didn't define precisely how it would work. But he did say it would create a tax rate floor for those who make more than $1 million per year. So let's use 2009 tax return data from the IRS to imagine some possible scenarios for how much additional tax revenue the new...

Do you support President Obama's proposed "Buffett Rule" for millionaires' tax rates? Yes No

Bernie Marcus, a co-founder of The Home Depot    (NYSE: HD) and one of Atlanta's wealthiest businessmen, says President Barack Obama’s plan to increase taxes on the rich would only serve to slow hiring and slow America's economic recovery, reports Atlanta Business Chronicle    broadcast partner WXIA-TV. He also sharply criticized billionaire Warren Buffet’s support of the plan. President Obama on Monday introduced a plan combining trillion-dollar spending cuts and the closure of tax law loopholes for the rich. "For us to solve this problem everybody including the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations have to pay their fair share" Obama...

US president Barack Obama, in a populist step designed to appeal to voters, will propose a 'Buffett Tax' on people making more than $1 million a year as part of his deficit recommendations to Congress on Monday. Such a proposal, among suggestions to a congressional super committee expected to seek up to $US3 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years, would appeal to his Democratic base ahead of the 2012 election, but may not raise much in revenues. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer said in a tweet on Saturday the tax would act as "a kind of [Alternative Minimum...

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is wondering why Fannie Mae agreed to buy 400,000 mortgages from Bank of America and whether its purchase of the risky assets constitutes a "backdoor bailout" of the bank. Issa sent a letter Thursday to Edward DeMarco, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) that regulates Fannie, asking for a justification of the deal, especially in light of the bank's recently announced spate of layoffs. "The transaction appears to have shifted a significant amount of risk from BofA's portfolio to Fannie.

Dear Mr. Buffet: The president says you are upset about how much federal tax you pay and you want to pay more.

C’mon, IRS. “Stop coddling the super rich.” Contrive to successfully extract the taxes they already owe.Mr. Buffett, I barely want to waste my breath on your blatant hypocrisy.And, Mainstream Media (by which I mean the NYT, which ran Buffett’s obnoxious op-ed in the first place), WHERE ARE YOU?From NewsMax: Billionaire investor Warren Buffett triggered a major debate over taxes recently when he wrote in The New York Times that he should be paying more to the federal government. He called on Washington lawmakers to up tax rates on the rich.But it turns out that Buffett’s own company, Berkshire Hathaway, has...

For a guy who spends a lot of time advocating for higher taxes, Warren Buffett does a remarkably good job of minimizing his own corporate tax bill. This is all to the good for Mr. Buffett and his fellow Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, who no doubt can invest the money more wisely than the federal government is likely to do. Mr. Buffett's recent decision to invest in Bank of America represents another tax-avoidance triumph for the Berkshire chief executive. U.S. corporations are subject to a top federal income tax rate of 35%, the second highest in the world. But the Journal's...

God Almighty. I am having a really, really hard time with this. The Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is an award bestowed by the President of the United States and is—along with the comparable Congressional Gold Medal bestowed by an act of U.S. Congress—the highest civilian award in the United States. It recognizes those individuals who have made "an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."[3] The award is not limited to U.S. citizens and, while it is a civilian award,...

Some rich Americans will not rest until Washington boosts their taxes. Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett, Earth's second-wealthiest inhabitant, complains that last year he paid $6,938,744 in federal income taxes, just 17.4 percent of his taxable income. Twenty of his staffers earned much less than he did, but "their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent," Buffet recently wrote ("Please Tax Me. I Can Take It," August 16). Rather than work to cut his colleagues' taxes, the $50 Billion Man wants Uncle Sam to hike his liability. < snip > Assistant House Democratic Leader James Clyburn of South...

Investors might hang on Warren Buffett's every word when it comes to financial advice, but Republicans are less than enthusiastic about the Oracle of Omaha's opinions on taxation. After the billionaire chairman of investment firm Berkshire Hathaway wrote an op-ed in the New York Times complaining that the mega-rich are undertaxed in comparison to the middle class, conservatives urged him to voluntarily send more of his own money to the Internal Revenue Service and leave others alone. Not only are they willfully missing Buffett's point, they're seemingly oblivious to the fact that in many ways his tax ideas mirror those...

A number of my liberal FB friends are linking to Warren Buffet's NYTimes barf-ed, Stop Coddling The Super Rich. Apparently it's an "instant hit on the internet". Learjet limosine liberals like him and Hollywood elites love to demagogue the issue. They can afford to do so because they don't have to put their money where their mouth is and be taxed on their wealth: As I wrote then, the super rich won’t mind at all if we “tax the rich” as it’s currently defined. That’s because people who are super rich don’t really pay taxes. They pay taxes on...

Mr. Buffet’s oft stated plan to avoid any tax rate: "Our favorite holding period is forever You only pay income taxes at any rate on realized appreciation. An investment with a holding period of forever incurs a capital gains tax of 0%, while all along the holder can be getting wealthy from appreciation. "

OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched. While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80...