Bill Gates Rejects Donating to U.S. Treasury After Calling for Higher Taxes on Rich

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates rejected the idea of voluntarily donating to the U.S. Treasury after calling for the U.S. government to raise taxes on the wealthy.

"When I say the government needs to raise more money, some people ask why Melinda and I don’t voluntarily pay more in taxes than the law requires," Gates, the second-richest person in the world, wrote in a recent blog post. "The answer is that simply leaving it up to people to give more than the government asks for is not a scalable solution. People pay taxes as an obligation of law and citizenship, not out of charity. Additional voluntary giving will never raise enough money for everything the government needs to do."

In June, PJM had asked Gates if he plans to voluntarily donate to the federal government in the absence of tax increases but he did not respond to the question.

Gates argued that "Americans in the top one percent can afford to pay a lot more before they stop going to work or creating jobs." He referred to the creation of Microsoft to support his position on taxes.

"In the 1970s, when Paul Allen and I were starting Microsoft, marginal tax rates were almost twice the top rate today. It didn’t hurt our incentive to build a great company," he said.

Gates called for increasing the capital gains tax, "probably to the same level as taxes on labor" as well as raising the estate or "death" tax.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a Democratic presidential candidate, has called for the implementation of a "wealth tax." Gates explained that he supports "taxing large fortunes that have been held for a long time," perhaps "ten years or more."

“The answer is that simply leaving it up to people to give more than the government asks for is not a scalable solution. People pay taxes as an obligation of law and citizenship, not out of charity. Additional voluntary giving will never raise enough money for everything the government needs to do.”

I thought he was a logical man. Maybe he is, but thinks we’re not. Is he saying that his money has no value to the government if it’s given voluntarily, and not coerced?

Maybe you and several other people on this thread are reading this differently than I, but what he said makes perfect sense to me. People only pay taxes because they have to. If taxes weren't mandatory, then no one would pay them. The government needs to raise taxes, because it wants to spend more and can't depend on people choosing to pay above and beyond what they already have to. And since it's not a solution since everyone else won't do it, then he's gonna talk a bunch of talk but not going to do it, until the gov makes him. He's still hypocritical about it (especially with how he's set up most of his wealth into non-taxable trusts that escape the taxes he wants to impose), but what he said is true. FedGov has to force people to pay more taxes if it wants more moolah.

He was presenting a false dilemma, a classic rhetorical fallacy. Even if you argue (as he does) that taxes have to be mandatory to be effective, that doesn’t mean that the aims of government would not also be aided by his own voluntary donations. Of course they would. So, since he believes that the government deserves even more money, what’s stopping him? Not only would it have more to work with, but his good example might inspire other wealthy sorts who share his vision of bigger, more intrusive government.

More likely is that it’s cheaper for him to get in the good graces of angry Leftists by arguing for more taxes, than by actually paying them. Other people can do the paying, if it comes to that.

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