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President Obama and his wife Michelle paid 18.4% in taxes on $608,611 in 2012. April 12 (Bloomberg) — President Obama, wife, Michelle, had adjusted gross income of $608,611 in 2012, paid $112,214 in taxes, according to federal tax returns released by White House. • Vice President Biden, wife, Jill, report $385,072 in adjusted gross income, paid $87,851 in federal taxes • Obamas donated $150,034, ~24.6% of adjusted gross income, to 33 charities Here are the Obama’s 2012 tax returns. What happened to the vitriol about Warren Buffett’s tax rate versus his secretary? The same holds true about the vitriol about...

Billionaire Warren Buffett loves Heinz ketchup with his hash browns so much that he is driving Heinz into junk status. Maybe he actually likes Hunts Ketchup better. His love of ketchup and hash browns is transforming H.J. Heinz Co. into the most-leveraged food maker in America. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and 3G Capital Inc.’s $2 billion acquisition of Heinz may double the company’s total debt to five times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to Fitch Ratings, the highest of any comparable food company. The cost to protect Heinz’s debt from losses soared to a record after the...

Interesting news for auto-watchers: Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK-A), the savvy conglomerate controlled by the great Warren Buffett, disclosed in an SEC filing on Thursday that it had bought 10 million shares of General Motors (NYSE: GM). That comes on top of another 15 million shares of GM Berkshire bought earlier in 2012, bringing the total value of the company's investment in the General to nearly $700 million as of Thursday's close. That's not chump change, even by Buffett's standards. What might Berkshire be thinking? Is GM a value stock? The obvious guess for anyone who knows anything about Buffett's career...

<p>The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has frozen the assets of a Swiss trading account that allegedly made a series of "highly suspicious" trades reaping about $1.7 million ahead of the blockbuster sale of H.J. Heinz Co.</p> <p>The regulator's move came one day after Heinz said it was selling itself for $23 billion to Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital in one of the biggest food-industry acquisitions ever.</p>

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett is dipping into the ketchup business as part of $23.3 billion deal to buy the Heinz ketchup company. H.J. Heinz Co. says it’s the largest deal ever in the food industry. The company, based in Pittsburgh, also makes Classico spaghetti sauces, Ore-Ida potatoes and Smart Ones frozen meals. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and its partner on the deal—3G Capital, the investment firm that bought Burger King in 2010—say Heinz will remain headquartered in Pittsburgh. Heinz CEO William Johnson said in a statement that the company “will have an opportunity to drive further growth” as a private enterprise....

(Reuters) - Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and private equity firm 3G Capital will buy ketchup and baby food maker H.J. Heinz Co for $23.2 billion in cash, a deal that combines 3G's ambitions in the food industry with Buffett's hunt for growth. Including debt assumption, Heinz valued the transaction, which it called the largest in its industry's history, at $28 billion. Berkshire and 3G will pay $72.50 per share, a 19 percent premium to the stock's previous all-time high.

Arizona, 2007: A child is suspended for drawing images of a gun: MESA, Ariz. — Parents of a Florence student suspended for sketching a gun during class say his punishment is an overreaction by school officials. The eighth-grader at Florence's Walker Butte K-8 school was suspended for three days on Aug. 24 for drawing images of a gun. Stephanie Vardarkis said her son, Joshua, had drawn the images on index cards, sort of like a cartoon that included a stick figure holding a gun. In one image, the boy included the name of the school resource officer. Rather than it...

You may be sick of hearing about him again, but Warren Buffett did huge damage serving as Obama’s useful fool last year. Dupes comprise a long, dubious tradition in American history. Over 200 years ago, George Washington warned the nation about “dupes” in his historic Farewell Address. Such warnings would echo from the founding of the republic through the Cold War. During the Cold War, “dupe,” like the associated word, “useful idiot” — attributed to Vladimir Lenin — became an everyday term. Dupes were legion during the Cold War, a unique breed of (largely) left-leaning Americans who, unwittingly, allowed or...

WASHINGTON - The Manassas News & Messenger is no more. The paper printed its final edition after 143 years of covering the news in Prince William County, Manassas and Manassas Park Sunday. The paper's parent company, the Warren Buffett-owned World Media Enterprises, decided to close the paper and its website ... World Media Enterprises purchased the paper, as well as several others, from Media General in June. ... All employees lost their jobs, and

"I just got fed up. It wasn't just Warren Buffett. There's been a half dozen of these things lately, and what I noticed is everyone is asking for taxes to be raised except the taxes they actually pay," Brown told me on the sidelines of the Minyanville Festivus event. So in that light, let's look at the gap that exists between proposed tax hikes and actual impact. The proposed income tax increase on couples earning more than $250,000 year: Buffett's $100,000 a year salary is well known - as is the complaint that his poor, lowly secretary has a higher...

Warren Buffett, in a New York Times Op-Ed piece Monday, is proposing a minimum tax on high incomes and a higher ceiling of $500,000 on increased taxes on wealthy Americans. "I support President Obama's proposal to eliminate the Bush tax cuts for high-income taxpayers. However, I prefer a cutoff point somewhat above $250,000 - maybe $500,000 or so," the Berkshire Hathaway head wrote. "Additionally, we need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that."

The days are ticking off to a January 1 fiscal implosion, and Republicans are trying to MacGyver a fiscal fix. Three days after the election, President Obama claimed the voters had given him a mandate to raise taxes on the rich. With Pew reporting that 58 percent of Americans feel the rich pay too little in taxes, it’s hard for Republicans to contradict the president. Unless Congress intervenes to prevent the Bush tax cuts from expiring, high earners will face significantly higher income taxes in 2013. For the top two brackets, the rate will rise to 36 percent (from 33...

Warren Buffett has an op-ed in today's NY Times on one of his most popular themes: The rich should pay more in taxes.  At first blush, his position seems noble: A rich guy says that people like him should pay more to support the commonwealth.  But on closer examination, one realizes that Mr Buffett never mentions doing anything to eliminate the tax-avoidance strategies that he uses most aggressively.  In particular: 1. His company Berkshire Hathaway never pays a dividend but instead retains all earnings.  So the return on this investment is entirely in the form of capital gains.  By not paying dividends, he saves his investors (including...

In a NYT Op-Ed today, Warren Buffett argued that the rich should pay a certain minimum tax, and he explained to activist Grover Norquist that it's preposterous to think that businessmen would forgo profitable deals merely because the rate of tax on the profits would go up. But why do people listen to Buffett on taxes? Basically because he's a rich, successful guy (which is why a lot of people are listened to on a lot of subjects). To that end, economist and former Romney advisor Greg Mankiw has a short post talking about Buffett as a master of "tax...

Warren Buffett Just Made A Huge Bet On The US Housing Market Matthew BoeslerOct. 31, 2012, 11:13 AMPerhaps the most bullish indicator for U.S. housing is Warren Buffett. The legendary investor has been buying up real-estate brokerages around the country as he bets on a housing turnaround. Now, he is partnering with Brookfield Asset Management, a Canadian real-estate investor, to more than double the size of his brokerage business. Bloomberg Businessweek's Noah Buhayar has the details: Berkshire’s HomeServices of America Inc. unit will be the majority owner of the venture to manage a U.S. residential real-estate affiliate network, according to...

Despite the 6.5% stock market rally over the last three months, a handful of billionaires are quietly dumping their American stocks . . . and fast. Warren Buffett, who has been a cheerleader for U.S. stocks for quite some time, is dumping shares at an alarming rate. He recently complained of “disappointing performance” in dyed-in-the-wool American companies like Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, and Kraft Foods. In the latest filing for Buffett’s holding company Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett has been drastically reducing his exposure to stocks that depend on consumer purchasing habits. Berkshire sold roughly 19 million shares of Johnson...

A decision by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. BRKB -0.15% to end a large wager on the municipal-bond market is deepening questions from some investors about the risks of buying debt issued by cities, states and other public entities. The Omaha, Neb., company recently terminated credit-default swaps insuring $8.25 billion of municipal debt. The termination, disclosed in a quarterly filing with regulators this month, ended five years early a bullish bet that Mr. Buffett made before the financial crisis that more than a dozen U.S. states would keep paying their bills on time, according to a person familiar with the...

A group of businessmen with ties to Warren Buffett, George Soros, President Obama, and socialist senator Bernie Sanders are pushing a plan to use the government's power of eminent domain to seize billions of dollars worth of underwater mortgages from banks and bondholders. Word of the plan surfaced earlier this month in a Reuters dispatch that reported the eminent domain strategy but not the political ties of the businessmen involved in the plan nor their links to two of America's most prominent and outspoken billionaires. The Reuters article said a firm called Mortgage Resolution Partners, chaired by Steven Gluckstern, a...

Unlike the government (and unlike the New York Times), we come to celebrate Apple, not to bury it. The Times' recent headline about the Cupertino-based computer company was, "How Apple Sidesteps Billions in Taxes." A couple of obvious conclusions may be drawn. Either, this is shameful. Or, this is admirable. You can read the Times story and draw your own conclusion about that paper's conclusion. You can find it here. However, there are a few tell-tale signs that tip the Times' hand. Here's one: . . .

(Reuters) - BYD Co Ltd , a Chinese carmaker backed by U.S. billionaire Warren Buffett, posted a 90 percent slide in quarterly profit as it was hit by a slowdown in the world's largest car market and losses in its solar business. China's once-sizzling auto industry has succumbed to softening economic growth, further exasperated by new vehicle offerings in the fiercely competitive market. BYD, which attracted investment from Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway because of its battery technology, has started selling pure electric cars and buses in China. BYD, which debuted its new generation of plug-in sedans at the Beijing auto show...

President Barack Obama has gotten a lot of mileage out of touting his “Buffett Rule” to force millionaires to pay more in taxes. Maybe he thinks earning three-quarters of a million gives him a free ride. . .

The president seemingly lost a major fight Monday when the Senate shot down his "Buffett Rule" minimum tax for the wealthy, one of his signature issues and what promises to be a central plank of his reelection campaign. Or did he lose? ...

World English Dictionary zombie or zombi (ˈzɒmbɪ) 1. a person who is or appears to be lifeless, apathetic, or totally lacking in independent judgment; automaton Obama supporters do not generally have much will. They lack independent judgment. They are automatons. They are easily distracted by shiny objects and Barack Obama has a host of shiny things he uses to distract them from the real issues facing the nation. As he has no record upon which to run, Obama needs these shiny objects and they are critical to his re-election efforts. Among them: The Buffett RuleObama has made and continues to...

Reporting from Washington— Republican-led opposition blocked the 'Buffett rule' from advancing in the Senate, turning back an election year effort by President Obama to slap a new tax rate on those earning beyond $1 million a year. Nearly all Republicans voted against the measure, a potentially risky move at a time when 60% of voters support the measure, according to a recent Gallup poll, as a way to ensure wealthy Americans pay their fair share of taxes. Democrats are likely to revive the effort in coming months. “Continuing to allow some of the wealthiest Americans to use special tax breaks...

Both President Barack Obama and billionaire investor Warren Buffett agree that they both ought to be taxed more. Both currently have the option of paying more than they owe. However, both decline to do so. “While it’s true that I, or any other taxpayer, for that matter, could voluntarily contribute more of his or her income to the government, that’s not the point,” the President insisted. “Voluntary contributions leave the discretion up to the individual. Whether a person paid more would be a matter of personal choice.” “What I am trying to establish is the principle under law that certain...

Here's the latest Obama class warfare shot. He is trying to show that "millionaires" should keep less of their money because it belongs to him. It's a "Buffett Rule" calculator. But, there's no calculator for multi millions in taxes due and owing to the IRS by Buffett. The Direct link is above Their email said, " No household making more than $1 million each year should pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than a middle class family pays. This is the Buffett Rule—a simple principle of tax fairness that asks everyone to pay their fair share. ABOUT...

Inteview at link

Has anyone else gotten this email from the WH. My gf sent this to me. I copied the link off the email. Looks like it'll track you if you click on the link.

“"If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from....You make a big election about small things," ” - Barack Obama 08/28/08Obama uttered these words just a few short years ago. It was supposedly a charge against politics as usual. Now, he is following the politics as usual playbook to a tee. And as he continues on his "anything but my record" tour he had the gall to say Ronald Reagan would be FOR the Buffet Rule: President Obama continued his push Wednesday to build support for the Buffett rule...

See: Obama takes 'Buffett Rule' on the road “The president believes in standing up for the middle class and making our tax system fairer, where everyone plays by the same set of rules, in order to ensure the economic security of the middle class,� the White House said in a release announcing the event at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton. For those who are not familiar with the ``Buffett Rule``, it is a class warfare tax whose roots are found in the Marxist handbook, and is designed by conniving politicians to buy the votes of one economic class by...

What percent of all tax revenues do high-income households pay?   Income Tax All Federal Taxes Top 1% ($344,000 +) 39.5% 28.1% Top 5% ($155,000 +) 61% 44.3% Top 10% ($112,000 +) 72.7% 55% Lower Half ($32,000 -) 2.4% 2.6% Middle Quintile ($65,000) 4.6% 9.2% All Households 100% 100% What is the average tax rate paid by high-income households?   Income Tax All Federal Taxes Top 1% ($344,000 +) 19% 29.5% Top 5% ($155,000 +) 17.6% 27.9% Top 10% ($112,000 +) 16.2% 26.7% Lower Half ($32,000 -) 1.9% 9.6% Middle Quintile ($65,000) 3.3% 14.3% All Households 9.3% 20.4% IRS Statistics...

Well, ok, since this has been floating around for a week or so now, we can finally get to the truth: the Buffet Rule is really more about spreading the wealth around. Just not that much wealth, according to the CBO, so it’s more symbolic of where we intend to go from here. So anyway, the “Buffet Rule” was never about paying down the deficit? It was about making life “fair” all along? The goal, Mr. Furman explained, is to establish a "a basic issue of tax fairness." ... ...On another front: all hell’s broken loose again with one of...

April 1, 2012 Board of Directors Berkshire Hathaway Inc. 3555 Farnam Street, Suite 1440 Omaha, NE 68131 Dear Members of the Board... ..."Compensation: "We believe that the board has conveniently chosen to maintain the status quo and ignore these critical issues in order to preserve the directors’ generous board fees, .... As a result, the board has stood by idly as the stock price has lagged the general market during the past three months... Given the directors’ excessive board fees and lack of economic ownershipin the business, it is not surprising that the Berkshire board has fought for years to...

There goes the Buffett rule. Remember that political gambit, in which billionaire Warren Buffett pretended he was going to pay a much higher tax bill and President Obama pretended that raising rates on millionaires would make a dent in his hemorrhaging budget deficits? In one fell swoop Wednesday, Congress's tax scorekeeper punctured both phony claims. The analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation also showed less wealthy taxpayers why the Buffett ruse would eventually end up exposing them to higher taxes. With Mr. Buffett's help, Mr. Obama promoted the fairy tale that millionaires pay lower tax rates than their middle-class...

“The higher up in the tree the monkey goes, the more of his backside that shows,” goes the maxim. It would be hard to climb higher than Warren Buffett, the world's most celebrated investor. However, as the namesake of the Buffett Rule that imposes higher tax rates on the wealthy, Buffett and his backside dangle precariously “out on a limb.” Residing atop Buffett's tree is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, known to deliver the best rhetorical broadside, probably because of his broad backside. Last week, Christie buffeted Buffett, forcing him to Think Again. After two years of traumatic budget austerity,...

Warren Buffett's Greatest Fear: An Inevitable Nuclear, Chemical Or Biological Attack On The US Simone FoxmanFebuary 27, 2012In an hours-long interview with CNBC this morning, Warren Buffett admitted that his biggest fear for the U.S. economy is not growth, public debt, Europe, or any of the many threats that generally top economists' worry lists. It's actually a nuclear, biological, or chemical attack. Even so, an American baby is probably the luckiest person in the world today. From the interview: CNBC's Becky Quick: Overall you are very optimistic about the future not only of this country but of the stock market....

VIDEO AT THE LINK "He should just write a check and shut up. Really. And just contribute. I'm tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he's got the ability to write a check. Go ahead and write it," Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said to CNN's Piers Morgan.

Say goodbye to the much-loathed Alternative Minimum Tax and hello to the Buffett Rule. Sweet relief. The AMT has perplexed taxpayers and agonized accountants for decades. But wait: Are the AMT and the Buffett Rule really so different? The two take aim at different types of tax avoidance, so the details have little in common. But the headline is the same: Both were designed to make sure that wealthy citizens pay their fair share of income tax -- without creating a tax monster that somehow reaches down to regular people. When the AMT came into being in 1969, rich people...

Berkshire Hathaway chairman and famous investor Warren Buffett has dismissed gold as a "valueless asset". Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has dismissed gold as a valueless asset saying that it has no inherent value. In an article for Fortune magazine, Buffett said that gold investors were pinning their hopes on future demand. He warned that gold was a self-inflating bubble, created by investors desperate for a viable alternative to property and shares. The infamous investor warned that investors in gold would be left with egg on their face when the price eventually crashed. "Bubbles blown large enough inevitably pop," he said....

Gasparino actually said in plain English: 1. The 2008 Real Estate Bubble was caused in large part by the three ratings agencies 2. That Warren Buffet had ownership of Moody's and made millions at the time. 3. That the Lubrizol purchase was a continuation of a trend that Buffet has shown toward these sorts of ethical lapses in very large, economy moving transactions. So far, this is the very first time that anyone in the MSM has uttered such things, and the last place I thought I'd see it was on a Fox channel. Kudos to Gasparino for actually reporting...

Warren Buffet’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, served as a stage prop for President Obama’s State of the Union speech. She was the President’s chief display of the alleged unfairness of our tax system – a little person paying a higher tax rate than her billionaire boss. Bosanek’s prominent role in Obama’s “fairness” campaign piqued my curiosity, and I imagine the curiosity of others. How much does her boss pay this downtrodden woman? So far, no one has volunteered this information. The IRS publishes detailed tax tables by income level. The latest results are for 2009. They show that taxpayers earning an...

People earning over $1 million per year should pay an effective tax rate of no less than 30 percent, President Obama said in his State of the Union address Tuesday night. The president laid down one of his most political markers of the annual policy speech by crafting what he called the "Buffett Rule," named after the famous billionaire investor. "Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes," Obama said.

When President Obama, who is normally a great proponent of “infrastructure” projects, made his bizarre decision to block the Keystone XL pipeline project, I wondered if he might have been induced to create those thousands of American jobs if the oil could be moved by his beloved high-speed rail. As it turns out, oil is already moved from northern latitudes, such as the booming oil fields of North Dakota, down to the Gulf of Mexico by rail of the old, low-speed variety. Fortunately, as Newt Gingrich pointed out during the Monday night Republican debate in Florida, the oil is on...

'Whatever people bring to us, we're ready to haul' (BLOOMBERG) — Warren Buffett’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from the Obama administration’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit. With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department. “Whatever people bring to us, we’re ready to haul,” Krista York-Wooley, a spokeswoman for Burlington Northern, a unit of Buffett’s Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc. (BRK/A), said in an...

Not since his minions handed out lab coats at a White House Obamacare rally has Barack Obama committed such a lame or electorate-insulting act of political theater. But it's just part of the class war he must wage if he's to get re-elected. Code word: fairness. Politico: Billionaire Warren Buffett's longtime secretary will be joining first lady Michelle Obama in her box at tonight's State of the Union, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer announced on Twitter. Debbie Bosanek, who has worked for Buffett for nearly two decades, has become a symbol in the White House's fight over the tax code...

Warren Buffett has written his first check to the U.S. Treasury since announcing his pledge to match Republican donations to pay down the national debt a week ago. Carol Loomis, Fortune's senior editor-at-large and long-time friend of Buffett's, reports that the Omaha investor received a letter from Congressman Scott Rigell of Virginia (pictured below). In it, Rigell details the $49,000 he had donated to Treasury in total in 2011 and 2012 and asks Buffett to match both (full letter is below). Buffett agreed (full letter below). Lest we raise your hopes that the national debt is over as an issue,...

Despite his advanced age, it appears Warren Buffett has never heard the admonition, “Practice what you preach.” And it seems that some of his apologists haven’t, either. As you may know, Buffett has long been urging the government to seize more money from the rich, with the rationale that they have an obligation to pay more. In response, many traditionalists have told him to put up or shut up: If he truly believes in what he says, there’s nothing stopping him from writing a check to Big Brother as large as his socialism-espousing mouth. And now Buffett has a response:...

Business mogul Warren Buffet is promising to match any donation Republican members make toward cutting the national deficit. And he upped the ante when it came to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), saying he would match the leader's donations three-to-one. His pledge comes after McConnell said that if Buffett is feeling guilty about not paying more in taxes, he should just send in a check. "With regard to his tax rate, if he’s feeling guilty about it, I think he should send in a check," McConnell said on NBC's "Meet the Press" in September.

The Billionaires of the Left aren't interested in making money. The reason is that they're Good People, and Good People Don't Tell Lies. Warren Buffett is a Good Person who wants to pay more taxes. How do we know? 'Cause he says so, any time the media ask him. That's proof enough, isn't it? George Soros isn't interested in making more billions. Soros is a Good Convicted Insider Trader, who tried to knock off the currency of Malaysia and the UK, impoverishing millions of people. When asked about that, Gyorgyi says somebody had to do it. See? He's a Good...

Berkshire's NetJets subsidiary has been assessed $643 million in back taxes, and NetJets has now responded with a lawsuit against the IRS, claiming the assessment is "illegal."