Warren Buffett Makes Money On Tax Breaks He Discredits

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

There he goes again, Warren Buffett bleating about the supposed need for government to more heavily tax high-income earners while he owns life insurance companies that sell high earners "estate planning" products that help them avoid those taxes.

Of course, the higher taxes go, the more tax-sheltered products Buffett's companies sell, and the more money he makes.

Buffett's hypocrisy is matched only by the size of his multibillion-dollar investment portfolio. He displayed this in a recent column he wrote for the New York Times.

He pointed out the Forbes 400 list of the wealthiest individuals has about $1.7 trillion in wealth, then called for "a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30% of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35% on amounts above that."

But wealth and income are different things. Wealth is the stocks, bonds, real estate, paintings, wine collections, businesses, and other things a person has acquired. Buffett has lots of wealth. Income is what a person gets paid for working or investments, through capital gains, dividends, and the like. Most of Buffett's "income" is in dividends and capital gains, which are taxed less heavily than wages, and which he can choose to take or not take.