In 2007 and 2011, Bezos did not pay any money in federal income tax.

By Nicholas Sherman – June 8, 2021 – for Just the News

My cmnt: As a resident of Nebraska we know a little about Warren Buffet. He makes a big show of still living in the same modest house for a jillion years but never speaks about his properties and mansions around the country and the world where he spends considerable time. Buffet makes a big show of giving away all of his wealth to the Gates Foundation only to become richer every year. Buffet was reported saying that if the charitable tax laws were ever changed his pledge of money to Gates would be rescinded. Buffet also makes a big deal about wanting his tax rate raised. That is nonsense. He is free, like everyone else, to write any check he wants to the IRS every year. It was also reported in the Omaha World Herald, which he owns, that his tax lawyers were fighting with all due vigor an IRS judgment of two billion dollars against his company. If he really wanted to be taxed more than let the IRS have the money, he won’t miss it.

My cmnt: He’s a total hypocrite who gives nearly nothing to his home state but prefers to make a big show of ‘giving’ his wealth away to the Gates Foundation. My suspicion has always been that whatever he ‘gives’ in charity is more than offset by what he does not have to pay in taxes. He derives no virtue signaling from paying his taxes but gets big kudos from the Left for ‘charitable’ giving.

My cmnt: Warren, here is what you should do with just a little of your vast billions. Set up an endowment for the University of Nebraska’s Ag, Engineering and Computer Science programs so that in-state kids would not have to pay any tuition or at least reduced tuition. These are vital programs for the state and you could catapult them into world class schools as they’re pretty good as it is even now. Fund UNL’s research grants in these fields. Give a pile of money to UNL’s Medical college. Give a pile of money to UNL’s sports programs like Phil Knight of Nike fame did for the University of Oregon and T. Boone Pickens did for Oklahoma State University. Give an endowment to the State of Nebraska to be used to offset our high property tax rates. And last but not least, be sure that none of your money goes to funding Leftist crap like Women’s and Gay studies or any of the social science departments.

My cmnt: Buffet also made a big deal about not leaving his vast wealth to his children. It is better for them to ‘make’ it on their own. Well he gave each of his kids at least a billion dollars so that they would have something to fall back on if they fail to make it on their own. What a crock. His son put on a photo art exhibit at Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha. Seriously, it was about the level of a freshman in college. Good thing he doesn’t have to live off the sales of his photography because no one is buying it. I assume the only reason his work was even displayed at Joslyn is because the late Mrs. Buffet was a big donor.

My cmnt: Now just to be fair here is a piece on Buffet’s life-long love affair with his first wife, Susan, with whom he did not live for the last 30 years of their marriage. Judge for yourself. Buffet strikes me as a single-minded geek like his good friend Bill Gates. Unlike Gates Buffet did not socialize a lot. Gates however spent more time with Jeffrey Epstein than his wife thought wise and liked to throw naked pool parties with prostitutes.

My cmnt: Buffet’s first wife Susan was set to inherit his vast wealth if he died first. Susan Thompson Buffett was an American activist for the causes of civil rights, abortion rights and birth control, and the first wife of investor Warren Buffett. She was a director of Berkshire Hathaway, owning 2.2 percent of the company worth about $3 billion at the time of her death, and was the 153rd richest person in the world. She was president of the Buffett Foundation, which has contributed millions of dollars to educational groups, medical research, family planning groups and other charities. – Wikipedia

IRS data shows the country’s wealthiest individuals over the past 15 year have paid nearly nothing in federal income tax, an investigate report released Tuesday shows.

The review by ProPublica, the investigative journalism organization, is based upon tax-return data from thousands of the nation’s wealthiest including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Tesla’s Elon Musk and investor Warren Buffett. 

Many including Bezos legally exploit loopholes and take advantage of tax code wording. A lot of income for the wealthy isn’t reported because such codes don’t consider money made from capital gains – on stocks, real estate and other investments – as “taxable income,” according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In 2007 and 2011, Bezos did not pay any money in federal income tax, while in 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk also paid nothing in income taxes.

From 2014 to 2018, Jeff Bezos’s wealth grew by $99 billion. He reported over that period a total income of $4.2 billion to the Internal Revenue Service. Yet he paid $973 million in taxes, or an effective tax rate of 0.98%, according to ProPublica.

Warren Buffet, a multibillionaire who has been a proponent of increasing taxes on the wealthy, paid only a 0.10% effective tax rate during that time. He reported a total income of $125 million, paying only $23.7 million, despite his wealth increasing by $24.3 billion. During that time, Buffet paid roughly 10 cents for every $100 he added to his wealth.