Posted on 06/28/2011 3:06:06 PM PDT by Qbert
What commonality binds Haim Saban, Penny Pritzker, and Warren Buffett, aside from membership in the billionaire's club? Guilt, and not the quotidian variety -- unfulfilled potential, disappointing behavior, lost love -- that afflicts most of us. Theirs is a guilt that only afflicts the very rich -- a guilt that arises from wanting more equitable outcomes coupled with an unwillingness to pay the requisite taxes to achieve those outcomes. It's the same guilt that has plagued Rockefeller, Kennedy, and Mott progeny for decades.
Messrs. Saban and Buffett and Ms Pritzker are newcomers to the world of self-imposed tax-deficiency guilt, but they have adapted fast. A few years ago, Mr. Buffett excoriated U.S. tax policy, claiming he was taxed at a measly 17.7 percent rate on his 2006 income of $46 million, while his coolie secretary was taxed at a 30 percent rate on her $60,000 annual stipend. (Mr. Buffett included FICA taxes in the calculation, though he shouldn't have; FICA is an insurance program that will directly benefit his secretary, and he excluded the corporate taxes extracted from his dividends and capital gains.)
Mr. Saban and Ms Pritzker also believe the rich should pay more. "Higher taxes for people like me to help others who are less fortunate -- that's okay by me," Mr. Saban was quoted in the now-defunct Portfolio magazine. "Warren said that over the last 20 years, the net worth of the 400 richest Americans has grown seven times and the average American's net earnings are flat. He said that's not right, and that's why he's a Democrat. I agree. It's not good for our democracy," Ms Pritzker was quoted by Bloomberg.
There is a hypocrisy, if not psychosis, at work in the minds of the tax-demanding rich: Mr. Buffett shielded $31 billion of his wealth by transferring it to Bill Gates' philanthropies. The Pritzker family is famous for employing a skein of trusts and offshore accounts to obfuscate their wealth. When the patriarch, Abram Pritzker, died, in 1986, his heirs claimed an estate worth $25,000. The Internal Revenue Service saw it differently, valuing the estate a few dollars north of that figure and sued to collect $53 million in back taxes. The two sides settled for $9.5 million in 1994.
Mr. Saban's actions suggest a passive-aggressive relationship with taxes. Four years ago he settled with the IRS after admitting to using offshore tax shelters to avoid paying $300 million on the $1.5 billion he realized after selling his share of Fox Family Worldwide to Disney. Mr. Saban told Senate investigators: "You have before you a very disappointed person, who feels misled, lied to, cheated."
Ms Pritzker sees no contradiction, much less irony, in the need to pay taxes and the desire to avoid taxes. In fact, she readily justifies the practice of demanding more taxes and then getting out of Dodge with this creaky riposte to Bloomberg: "Our family has done more than just good tax planning. What we're good at is building businesses, creating jobs and supporting our economy.''
Most income earners -- salary and wage earners, in particular -- are stuck with their onerous tax burden (which, by the way, is why they rarely bitch about paying too little tax). The very rich, in contrast, enjoy the economy of scale to defer and avoid taxes through trusts, off-shore accounts, property exchanges that resemble barters, and myriad manipulations of the tax code. Their tax-importuning subset are like the chatty members of a group dinner who convince everyone to order the foie gras, caviar, and truffles but skip out before the bill arrives.
There are solutions to this vexing tax problem. There is the obvious: The whiny woeful rich could simply write an additional tax check each year. But that solution doesn't allow the rich to step down from their pedestals when the mood strikes to commiserate with the lesser rich, nor does it allow them to join idiotic self-congratulatory Web sites like Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength. As for the psychosis, it is really a fear of being the lone patsy writing addition checks to the government.
If Mr. Buffett et al were serious about getting more of their money into government's hands, they would discipline themselves by promoting a wealth tax. They have it in Europe, where some governments require tax payers to prepare a balance sheet from which to extract their pounds of flesh. Spain, Greece, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein impose their own version of wealth taxes, just not with France's taxation fervor.
The beauty of a wealth tax for the tax-deprived rich is that it can be worded to eliminate deductions and loopholes. Transfers to trusts, charities, off-shore accounts, or legal persons; to spouses; to children; to relatives; to friends; to anyone or anything anywhere won't reduce the tax burden a dime.
A wealth tax could state that transferred assets (including the assets transferred from years past) and the return they generate would always be counted toward the rich's net worth when calculating tax liability. Reductions would only occur through loss in market value. There would no lawyering, accounting, or financial planning a way out of the tax.
Would there be costs? Perhaps the United States would experience a financial and intellectual drain from those rich less enthusiastic about paying taxes. According to a 2006 Washington Post article, France loses a millionaire a day to friendlier tax regimes. One circumspect pundit referenced in the Post, Eric Pinchet, estimated the wealth tax earns the government about $2.6 billion a year but has cost the country more than $125 billion in capital flight since 1998. Not exactly a favorable benefit-cost paradigm.
But let's be honest: The very rich don't want to pay more tax, they want you to pay more taxes. The very rich simply want to indulge in proletarian rhetoric and in the notoriety of proclaiming to want to pay more taxes. These rich tax agitators know that the real cost of any tax freight is borne by the comfortable and very comfortable, the almost rich and nearly rich income earners. The pro-tax very rich are prevaricators as much as they are hypocrites.
Stephen Mauzy is a financial writer and principal of S.P. Mauzy & Associates. He can be reached at steve@spmauzyandassociates.com.
The guilt of some does not justify the use of force to violate the rights of others with unjust taxes. It is no one’s moral obligation to sacrifice his values or wealth to the government’s redistributionist policies, so that he may suffer his “fair share” of the damage it inflicts.
here you go, Warren:
** Gift Contributions to Reduce Debt Held by the Public **
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/gift/gift.htm
now STFU.
Ha! That is what I suggested to a co worker who said we should ALL be paying more taxes. I told her the government should set up a "charity fund" for people like her who want to pay more taxes and leave me the he!! alone.
She shook her head no no no, I said why not? She just kept saying no no no, not fair. I said what's not fair about it? You want to pay more, I don't. You can and I don't have to.
A win win situation ANY sane person could agree to.
Haim Saban, Penny Pritzker, and Warren Buffett... Theirs is a guilt that only afflicts the very rich -- a guilt that arises from wanting more equitable outcomes coupled with an unwillingness to pay the requisite taxes to achieve those outcomes. It's the same guilt that has plagued Rockefeller, Kennedy, and Mott progeny for decades.
has buffet ever volunteered a tax me more check?
>>I said why not? She just kept saying no no no, not fair. I said what’s not fair about it? You want to pay more, I don’t. You can and I don’t have to.<<
Any American can ABSOLUTELY over pay their taxes as much as he/she wants. No special fund necessary.
As you saw, That is the liberal killer argument. Tell the nearest well-meaning liberal they are free to pay as much tax as possible. If they want to fund colostomy bags for illegals through the government, pull out the checkbook.
As you saw, there is no rational response possible.
Lets see how fast these people who use the income rate at 15% like paying 35% like most people do.
I have a great idea. If these “Rich” feel so guilty then they should give 100% of their vast fortunes to the treasury. They have made it obvious they don’t need it, so donate it. Have them live only on their paychecks and nothing else and then let them tell us they still want to pay higher taxes. If I was an old fart like Buffet, I wouldn’t need his fortune either. I’d settle for 10% of the total and most likely couldn’t spend it all in the few years he has left.
“Ha! That is what I suggested to a co worker who said we should ALL be paying more taxes.”
Call her bluff: Tell her we should raise taxes then on those who currently aren’t paying any. (After all, we all need to “pay our fair share”, right?)
And ask her if it’s “fair” that large oil companies pay at a 35% average rate, while others pay zilch.
Nobody is stopping them from sending it all in to the gov’t.
You've hit the nail tantalizingly close to the head, but missed it nevertheless. What is missing from your equation above? Why, you have the rich, and the poor, but *NO* 'middle class'.
That is where you missed the mark. What they want, is reversion from a three tier society, back to a two tier society, one of 'masters' and 'slaves', 'lords' and 'serfs'. And they have the audacity to call *THAT* 'progress'. It boggles the mind...
the infowarrior
But let's be honest: The very rich don't want to pay more tax, they want you to pay more taxes.
That about sums it up.
Or how about phonies like Buffet and the others follow a *true* humanitarian (giving away millions... in the days before charitable deductions for tax purposes):
—Andrew Carnegie, Philanthropist:
“Can you imagine becoming the richest person in the world and then giving your money away? That’s exactly what Andrew Carnegie did. After retiring in 1901 at the age of 66 as the world’s richest man, Andrew Carnegie wanted to become a philanthropist, a person who gives money to good causes. He believed in the “Gospel of Wealth,” which meant that wealthy people were morally obligated to give their money back to others in society.
Carnegie had made some charitable donations before 1901, but after that time, giving his money away became his new occupation. In 1902 he founded the Carnegie Institution to fund scientific research and established a pension fund for teachers with a $10 million donation...
Throughout his life, Andrew Carnegie loved to read. So it made sense that he wanted to give money to support education and reading. When Carnegie was a young man he lived near Colonel James Anderson, a rich man who allowed any working boy to use his personal library for free. In those days, America did not have a system of free public libraries.
Carnegie never forgot Colonel Anderson’s generosity. As a result, Carnegie supported education; he gave money to towns and cities to build more than 2,000 public libraries. He also gave $125 million to a foundation called the Carnegie Corporation to aid colleges and other schools...”
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/carnegie/aa_carnegie_phil_1.html
The “super rich” don’t pay much in taxes....they have “people” to make sure they don’t....they hire CPA’s, attorneys, put together Trusts, and even TRADE trust money....ala Buffet and Gates....it’s their elite game.
Mr Buffett shielded $21 billion by transferring it to Bill Gates philantrophies.
He mustve thought that private charities knew better what to do with that $21 billion than the government. Otherwise he would’ve just sent it them. Lol
It is so easy to turn what these libs do against them.
I think we SHOULD have a wealth tax.
It should be assessed at an undisclosed rate (only to be found out when it hits) on every “wealthy” American (assets and income greater than X?) who complains that the wealthy like themselves don’t pay enough taxes.
Let’s be sure we relieve them of their guilt. We can use the proceeds to pay-down government debt; which we can be sure is also due to the kind of government spending programs the same guilty-wealthy people encourage.
No, there isn't. It's like speaking to a crazy person who has absolutely nothing coherent to say and you walk away saying "wtf?"
“Bull spit. The super rich left have no guilt, they simply know that confiscatory taxes and burdensome regulation will create a static economy where the rich stay rich and the poor stay poor. The super rich want their families to be the global aristocracy in perpetuity and that just can’t happen with a free market.”
Yeah, I’d have to agree with you. I thought the article was great, but the use of the word “guilt” was a false note. (And I think their actions described more than contradict their supposed “guilt” over taxes).
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