When the time comes to burn the motherf*cker down, maybe we’ll spare Warren Buffet’s home. Of course, we’ll still take all the rest of his belongings. He seems to be the only oligarch in the country who understands that the mobs might be coming to take a fair share of the country’s wealth back for the middle class and the poor. I love the fact that he pays the lowest percentage of taxes of anyone at his firm’s main office.
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. 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.
If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.
To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.
If the super-rich listen to Buffet, they just might get to keep their stuff and pass most of it on to their their children. If not? If not, they’re playing with fire, as events in England, Egypt, Syria, etc., make clear.