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Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Owes Taxes Going Back To 2002 [edited]

TurtleDude said:
You gain nothing by me-tooing someone else's claims that have no evidence or proof

I don't think you have the ability to explain it based on your past posts but go ahead

I need a good laugh
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ok, squire
what is it you want explained
 
justabubba said:
ok, squire
what is it you want explained
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I want you and your fellow traveler to prove

1) what Buffett's real motivations are

2) why I cannot understand that

3) why my argument as to his motivation is demonstrably incorrect

I will be back in three hours-that should be almost enough time for you and your ally to come up with a rational answer for all three
 
TurtleDude said:
I want you and your fellow traveler to prove

1) what Buffett's real motivations are

2) why I cannot understand that

3) why my argument as to his motivation is demonstrably incorrect

I will be back in three hours-that should be almost enough time for you and your ally to come up with a rational answer for all three
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you keep insisting you are an attorney, squire
and you want us to prove 'motivations'
any real attorney would realize that is impossible

so hold your breath for three hours and return
 
conservativeguy said:
So if a man creates a great company and decides to sell it late in life for a ton of money, his capital gains taxes should skyrocket based on only one factor, he built a really valuable company. Ok, I get it ....... we should penalize the smart folks that create valuable companies. Gee, that should work out well for us. Oh yeah, and once that man dies he should surrender 55% (death tax) of what he kept from the sale, after paying the cap gain taxes that were probably 30-40%. I used 30 to 40% since that level the taxation would be sufficiently higher than what most workers pay. I am assuming the new "Buffett Tax" has to be higher than the rate paid by ordinary people......right?

What a wonderful policy....

Man sells company for $100m

Man pays cap gains tax on sale, $100m * 65% = $65m net proceeds

Man dies and estate pays estate tax, $65 * 45% = $29.25m transferred to family

Uncle Sam screws man and his family out of $70.750m .......... 70.75% redistribution of private property to welfare beggars and socialists

------------------

Wow, that is one brilliant strategy to motivate folks to risk their capital to build valuable companies that create jobs. If the way to increase the number of job creators is to raise the cost of success, why not go all-in and simply say "once you build a valuable company, it will become an asset of the State". I am telling you this, you liberals sure have a firm grasp on what it takes to improve the economy.
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Poster still not understanding the concept of capital gain. If he sells it for $100m, then he has to make a 100% capital gain, which means he got the company for nothing, for him to bear the capital gain tax for the whole $100m.

Besides that, so what if only $30m goes to his family?
 
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LaMidRighter said:
Okay, I gave you way too much of my time last night. You don't want to do anything but defend Buffett so I'm done with you here. Seriously all you did was try to twist facts and play little games. If you can't admit Buffett is a hypocrite tax cheat then we're done here.
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Dude. Look into the mirror.
 
VanceMack said:
Buffet argues it is bad while engaging in it. Awesome. You simply CANT be honest about any of this. Thats some dogged and determined situational ethics you got there my friend.
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First of all that's not the point of his essay. But even if we take it as you do (which completely disregards the facts on the ground), it would be similiar to the US importing oil and then saying "We should be energy independent". To think that the US should stop importing oil the moment it says it want to be energy independent is stupid. To say that the US should stop saying "We should be energy independent" because it's still importing oil is also stupid. Call it hypocrisy if you want, it's still better than stupidity.

But the fact of the matter is that calling for energy independence doesn't obligate the US to stop importing oil just as calling for higher capital gain tax doesn't obligate Buffet to pay more than he needs to by law.
 
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LaMidRighter said:
I gave you a reasoned case and you failed to acknowledge the truth. What can I say?
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If your case was well reasoned, you would have been able to argue it. The fact is that you did not have a case, it seemed more like a personal vendetta against Buffet - mostly void of logic.
 
nonpareil said:
First of all that's not the point of his essay. But even if we take it as you do (which completely disregards the facts on the ground), it would be similiar to the US importing oil and then saying "We should be energy independent". To think that the US should stop importing oil the moment it says it want to be oil-independent is stupid. To say that the US should stop saying "We should be energy independent" because it's still importing oil is also stupid. Call it hypocrisy if you want, it's still better than stupidity.

But the fact of the matter is that calling for energy independence doesn't obligate the US to stop importing oil just as calling for higher capital gain tax doesn't obligate Buffet to pay more than he needs to by law.
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No...the example I cited CT is precisely applicable and accurate. Buffet CAN do everything he says he SHOULD do...he simply doesnt do it.

So not only is Buffet a liar...he doesnt pay less taxes than his secretary, he is also a hypocrite AND to cap this gem off...we have the president using his lie to promote 'the Buffet Rule'...which isnt even what Buffet wants or suggests. See how insipid this all is?
 
I see the rightwingers still haven't figured out the difference between corporate taxes, capital gains, and personal income taxes

And they think they know about business :lamo
 
TurtleDude said:
Obama supporters, cabinet members and advisors tend to be tax scofflaws. NO big surprise that someone who is as big an Obama ass kisser as Buffett is one too
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Total, unadulterated Bull****.
 
Top Cat said:
Total, unadulterated Bull****.
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Over the years a lot of suspicion has built up across the country about Washington and its population of opportunistic transients coming to see themselves as a special kind of person, somehow above average working Americans who don't labor down in that monument-strewn former swamp. Well, finally, an end to all those undocumented doubts. Thanks to some diligent digging by the Washington Post, those suspicions can at last be put to rest.

They're correct. Accurate. Dead-on. Laser-guided. On target. Bingo-bango. As clear as it's always seemed to those Americans who don't feel special entitlements and do meet their government obligations. We now know that federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.

All this political jabber about giving middle-class ... Americans a tax cut. Thousands of feds have been giving themselves one all along -- unofficially. And these tax scofflaws include more than three dozen folks who work for the president with that newly decorated Oval Office. The Post's T.W. Farnum did some research and found that out of the total sum, just 638 workers on Capitol Hill owe the IRS $9.3 million in back taxes. As in, overdue. The IRS gets stiffed by the legislative body that controls its budget. How Washington works.

Now, back taxes have been a problem for the Obama-Biden administration. You may recall early on that Tom Daschle was the president's top pick to run the Health and Human Services Department. But it turned out the former Democratic senator, who was un-elected from South Dakota in 2004, owed something like $120,000 to the IRS for things from his subsequent benefactor that he just forgot to pay taxes on. You know how that is. $120G's here or there. So he dropped out.

And then we learned this guy Timothy Geithner owed something like $42,000 in back taxes and penalties to the IRS, which is one of the agencies that he'd be in charge of as secretary of the Treasury. The fine fellow who's supposed to know about handling everyone else's money. In the end this was excused by Washington's bipartisan CYA culture as one of those inadvertent accidental oversights that somehow never seem to happen on the side of paying too much taxes.

Privacy laws prevent release of individual tax delinquents' names. But we do know that as of the end of 2009, 41 people inside Obama's very own White House owe the government they're allegedly running a total of $831,055 in back taxes. That would cover a lot of special chocolate desserts in the White House Mess.

In the House of Representatives, 421 people owe a total $6,524,892. In the Senate, 217 owe $2,774,836. In the IRS' parent department, Treasury, 1,204 owe $7,670,814. At the Labor Department, where Secretary Hilda Solis' husband had some back-tax problems before her confirmation, 463 owe $7,481,463. Eighty-one workers for the Federal Reserve System's board of governors owe $1,076,733.

Over at the Justice Department, which is so busy enforcing other laws and suing Arizona, 1,971 employees still owe $14,350,152 in overdue taxes.

Then, we come to the Department of Homeland Security, which is run by Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona who preferred to call terrorist acts "man-caused disasters." Homeland Security is keeping all of us safe by ensuring that a brave Dutch tourist is aboard every inbound international flight to thwart any would-be bomber with explosives in his underpants.

Within [Homeland Securityh], there reside 4,856 people who owe the tax agency a whopping total of $37,012,174.
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You're right. It IS bull****...of the true variety.

41 Obama White House aides owe the IRS $831,000 in back taxes -- and they're not alone - latimes.com
Article is here....I've snipped it:
 
nonpareil said:
Poster still not understanding the concept of capital gain. If he sells it for $100m, then he has to make a 100% capital gain, which means he got the company for nothing, for him to bear the capital gain tax for the whole $100m.

Besides that, so what if only $30m goes to his family?
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. Most folks that start a business from scratch often have little to no basis in the stock of the company.

Your last comment says a lot about you.
 
justabubba said:
you keep insisting you are an attorney, squire
and you want us to prove 'motivations'
any real attorney would realize that is impossible

so hold your breath for three hours and return
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wrong, a few people who obsess over me pretend I am not an attorney. Frankly I couldn't give a damn what you think of me but I wish you would actually try to make a rational argument rather than fixate over my profession

All you have down is Me Too Deuce without proffering any argument or evidence
 
sangha said:
I see the rightwingers still haven't figured out the difference between corporate taxes, capital gains, and personal income taxes

And they think they know about business :lamo
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actually it is the opposite

long term capital gains are taxed at a lower rate for those in top tax brackets than earned income. The richest taxpayers pay the highest rates on like income no matter what its source. Lefties pretend its wrong for someone with 10,000,000 in capital gains income to pay a lower rate than someone who has a salary of 500,000 dollars even though its a different type of income and even though the former pays many more actual tax dollars than the latter
 
Antiderivative said:
Buffet is a weasel, not some hero that is standing up for the common good of America that he and his proponents like to paint him out to be.

Given my knowledge of Buffet, this is hardly surprising. In fact, it is on par for him.
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its fun watching libs who normally crap their shorts over their hatred of the rich-especially those who get rich with other peoples money such as hedge fund managers-rush to kiss Buffett's ass thinking that his comments are really motivated out of his concern for the losers in the world
 
nonpareil said:
First of all that's not the point of his essay. But even if we take it as you do (which completely disregards the facts on the ground), it would be similiar to the US importing oil and then saying "We should be energy independent". To think that the US should stop importing oil the moment it says it want to be energy independent is stupid. To say that the US should stop saying "We should be energy independent" because it's still importing oil is also stupid. Call it hypocrisy if you want, it's still better than stupidity.

But the fact of the matter is that calling for energy independence doesn't obligate the US to stop importing oil just as calling for higher capital gain tax doesn't obligate Buffet to pay more than he needs to by law.
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That's a horrible analogy. If the US were to stop importing oil tomorrow, possibly every industry would seize up and we would face a crisis ten times more severe than the Great Depression. If Warren Buffet believes in paying higher taxes, yet refuses to donate a single dollar to the Treasury, it is absolutely hypocritical. A far more accurate analogy would be a rich man who believes the wealthy should pay their "fair share" yet refuses to step up and pay his "fair share." Oh wait a minute, I guess I don't need an analogy.
 
TurtleDude said:
1) what Buffett's real motivations are
2) why I cannot understand that
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Damn, those're hella requests. I doubt that anyone in the world could do those things, let alone on the int4rweb5.

Doesn't seem to be a realistic expectation on your part. ymmv

But why is there such a focus on his motivations?
Is there some reason why focusing on the issues instead won't serve your purposes?
 
DashingAmerican said:
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Owes Taxes Going Back To 2002
I don't know if I want to laugh and say IRONY or not be shocked.
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In the words of Spock, “Interesting!”

This is a microcosm of what American politics have become in an era of the Internet (where anyone can post anything) and opinion marketed as news. Some guy that has no clue what he is taking about packages facts they do not understand, puts a spin on those facts designed to incite those that know even less about the subject than he then feeds those facts to people of ignorance hungry for something to support their preconceived ideas of the world. Anyone that takes this as some type of indictment of Buffett has been had.

Let's start with the simple items:
1. Berkshire Hathaway is a public corporation, not Buffet’s personal holding company.
a. Berkshire has 1,200 institutional holders. All of the insiders, including Buffet, collectively hold less than 14% of the business. They do not have control. In fact, Buffet isn’t even the largest holder of BH, the Bill Gates Foundation is. It has 3 times the number of shares of Buffet.

BRK-A Major Holders | Berkshire Hathaway Inc. Common Stock - Yahoo! Finance

b. As a public corporation, it has a duty to its shareholders to maximize shareholder value, usually through maximizing profits. A part of maximizing profits is minimizing tax (see discussion of deferred taxes).


2. All corporations have two sets of books.
a. Accounting for income taxes and accounting for shareholders (generally accepted accounting principles or GAAP) are different things. Often there are different rules about expense and revenue recognition. For example, the IRS allows for more aggressive write-offs of equipment (even expensing) then GAAP which requires they be depreciated over useful lives.
b. Companies seek to maximize book profit and minimize taxes, so they are far more aggressive on expense recognition on the tax books and less aggressive on the book books….
c. The IRS and GAAP each require an accounting of the reconciliation between book income and tax income. On the tax return, this is on schedule M-1. On the books, its called deferred tax accounting, which is usually found on the balance sheet with a very extensive explanatory footnote.
d. Illustration: If you had $100 in revenue, $40 in cost, you would have a $60 profit. At a 35% tax bracket, the tax would $20. However, if your bought a $40 computer and expensed that year for tax purposes (and over 5 years for book purposes) suddenly you have different results. The tax books would show $20 of taxable income and $7 in tax; the book books would show $52 in taxable income and $18.20 in tax as follows:

Deferred tax revenue.jpg




So, given the company only paid $7.00 in taxes, but accrued $18.20, the difference is recorded as a deferred tax liability. They did not pay all of the tax associated with the profits of business, but elected to defer payment. This deferment can go on for years. This is the way every responsible company operates.

Of course, the above example is very basic. It gets a lot more complicated with international conglomerates such as BH, which does acquisitions and has holdings in insurance and railroads (very complex). The BH tax situation is very complex.

This brings us the assertion that BH is not paying its taxes.

Update: Warren Buffett’s Company Owes Nearly $1 Billion in Taxes | TheBlaze.com

What an absurdly naïve statement! Whoever came up with this knows zero about corporate finance and/or knows they play to an audience that knows even less. Let’s start with the assertion that they owe $1B in back taxes…. No, the deferred tax liability (taxes according to the books, that are not yet paid) is actually $35B, but there is not abnormal about that. The $1B being discussed in the article has NOTHING to do with taxes owed, in fact, unrecognized tax benefits are the opposite of owing money; it’s a potential tax liability offset (receivable), that because of accounting convention, is not on the books (just footnoted). See footnote 15 to the Berkshire Hathaway audited financial statements, which reconciles the company’s long-term and current deferred tax situation (between books and tax)

http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2010ar/201010-K.pdf

Then there is this whole dialogue about IRS audits. Again, this is silliness. A company with a $34B in deferred tax liabilities often are under constant audit. In fact, often the IRS maintains a de-facto office inside the corporate headquarters.

Sorry, but this whole thing is a bit analogous to someone looking at the balance sheet, seeing liabilities and yelling “hey, they aren’t paying their bills”
I appreciate the fact that people want to argue tax policy, and I further appreciate the fact that taxes are complex, maybe too complex, but people should use restraint and not talk authoritatively about things they knew little about.

Sorry cons, but on this one, you were conned.
 
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Simon W. Moon said:
Damn, those're hella requests. I doubt that anyone in the world could do those things, let alone on the int4rweb5.

Doesn't seem to be a realistic expectation on your part. ymmv

But why is there such a focus on his motivations?
Is there some reason why focusing on the issues instead won't serve your purposes?
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His motivations are key

the rich haters cyber fellate the man because they think he is looking out for the losers and ne'er do wells

those who understand how higher taxes benefit the uber wealthy are less likely to paen this asswipe
 
TurtleDude said:
His motivations are key
the rich haters cyber fellate the man because they think he is looking out for the losers and ne'er do wells
those who understand how higher taxes benefit the uber wealthy are less likely to paen this asswipe
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But the rest of us can't understand the issues that make his proposal a bad idea, so you're just gonna stick to trashing the man instead of his ideas?
 
Simon W. Moon said:
But the rest of us can't understand the issues that make his proposal a bad idea, so you're just gonna stick to trashing the man instead of his ideas?
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You claim to be a conservative and you cannot find fault with treating capital gains differently for someone who has no salary income and makes 5 million versus someone who has 4 million in LTCG and a million in salary?
 
Μολὼν λαβέ;1059872862 said:
Just like a wolf in sheep's clothing...
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Its fun watching the gullible engage in slurpage of a guy who would sell their body parts for cash if he could get away with it
 
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