Billionaire Warren Buffett urged Congress to raise taxes on the nation’s wealthiest individuals to help cut the U.S. budget deficit, saying it won’t inhibit investment or job growth.
“My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress,” the chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. wrote in an opinion article published in The New York Times. “It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.”
Buffett’s advocacy of higher taxes for the “mega-rich” may reinforce President Barack Obama’s call for an end to tax breaks for corporate- jet owners. In the op-ed piece, the 80-year-old investor said his federal tax bill last year, or the income tax he paid and payroll taxes paid by him and on his behalf, was $6,938,744.
“That sounds like a lot of money,” Buffett wrote. “But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.”
A 12-member panel, formed in the Aug. 2 law that raised the nation’s debt ceiling, is charged with finding $1.5 trillion in budget savings.
Buffett said that for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — he would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including dividends and capital gains. For the 8,274 taxpayers who made $10 million or more, he said they should get an additional increase in the rate.
