No. of Recommendations: 3
But it also results in a less-than-fair tax system. Warren Buffett will end up having earned more than $100 billion over his lifetime, and he'll end up paying less than a fraction of a percent of it in income tax. Meanwhile, you might take 20,000 accountants or lawyers, and they collectively might earn $100 billion over their lifetimes - but they'll pay close to 20% of it in income taxes. While there are lots of logistical and practical reasons that justify that discrepancy, it is far from fair - and it's worth keeping in mind that billionaires who earn their vast fortunes in their company's stock are absolutely paying a much smaller proportion of their lifetime earnings in taxes than most other people who earn far less.
I hit send too early.
I've always been amused at the Warren Buffet stories, especially the one where he claims he pays less in tax than his secretary. My retort on that one is that a) there's nothing stopping 'ol WB from writing a bigger check to the US Treasury every year and b) he's a cheap SOB for not paying his secretary anything.
There are also many ways to look at "Fair". Is it fair that one class of people pays literally NO income taxes? That's the system we have today - the bottom 40% pay zero in federal tax.
Or is it fair that a guy who's created 331,000 jobs (that's the estimate for the number of BH slots) to be taxed at a far higher rate than anyone else?
