Billionaire Warren Buffett suggested for Congress to raise taxes for the wealthiest Americans, in an effort to reduce the budget deficit. This will have consequences on investment and creating jobs, writes Bloomberg.
“Me and my friends have been spoiled quite a lot by the friendly politicians in Congress”, admitted the president of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., In a commentary published by the New York Times. “It is time for government to become serious in terms of sharing the sacrifice”.
Buffett’s request to increase the tax for the rich people will also bring on the table Obama’s proposal to charge companies that own airplanes.
The 80-yearold investor said that he contributed last year, by paying taxes to the state, with nearly $7 million to the state budget.
“This amount is a large sum. But what I paid was only 17% of taxable income, but 20% less of anyone who works in our office pays. The taxes paid by them range between 33% and 41% and the average is somewhere around 36%”, said Buffett.
Buffet says that those who earn over a million dollars a year, nearly 237,000 households in 2009, would have to pay higher taxes for everything beyond that amount, including dividends and capital gains.
“While middle class Americans fight for us in Afghanistan and most of the people struggle to survive the crisis, the richest Americans continue to get tax cuts”, admitted Buffet.
According to him, if in 1992 the richest 400 Americans had a taxable income of $17 billion and paid to the state nearly 30% of this amount, in 2008, even though their revenue grew to over 90 billion dollars, taxes paid to the state fell to 21.5%.