[hajola]

Warren also seemed to strongly hint (quoted below) that Treasury should be getting more of its revenue from corporate income tax. Maybe your quoted part was him reinforcing that point and putting BAs money where its mouth is.

"The $32 trillion of revenue was garnered by the Treasury through individual income taxes (48%), social security and related receipts (34 1⁄2%), corporate income tax payments (8 1⁄2%) and a wide variety of lesser levies. Berkshire’s contribution via the corporate income tax was $32 billion during the decade, almost exactly a tenth of 1% of all money that the Treasury collected. 8

And that means – brace yourself – had there been roughly 1,000 taxpayers in the U.S. matching Berkshire’s payments, no other businesses nor any of the country’s 131 million households would have needed to pay any taxes to the federal government. Not a dime."

[groot2581]

I don't get the enthusiasm for raising money from corporate income taxes versus individual income tax. Mr. Rich Moneybags pays the same corporate income taxes per share of Berkshire as Joe Schmoe, whose entire retirement pot might be a single BRK.A.

[brookst]

Mr. Rich Moneybas probably pays no personal income tax, and certainly pays a lower effective rate than Joe Schmoe.

Taking the tax money as corporate tax means they end up paying the same percentage, without Moneybags’ CPA leveraging shell companies and loopholes to avoid tax than Schmoe pays.

[Invictus0]

Rich moneybags never has to sell. He can just take out a margin loan and skip the taxes.

[badpun]

Surely you can't loan into infinity and have to sell at some point to start paying off the debt.

[Invictus0]

Suppose I have 100 million in my investment portfolio and a 5% interest rate. I want to buy a house for $10 million. So I withdraw 2 million in cash and get a margin loan for 2 million so I don't have to sell any securities. I take the 2 million in cash, get a mortgage for 8 million, and buy the house. On average the market returns 7%. So my $100 million portfolio is earning $7 million per year less the loan interest of 100k which comes to $6.9M. After 2 years I pay off the mortgage and repay the margin loan. I now have a house and I didn't have to pay any taxes on my securities to buy it.

What if the market goes down? Well, I just wait for it to go back up again. I can easily afford to wait, my margin of safety is huge. Since the margin loan is for 2 million, and I need a 50% margin of safety by law, then the portfolio value would need to decline to 2 million (98% decline) before my loan gets called.

[jareklupinski]

"...and don't call me Shirley"

[flandish]

Because of the class difference between working/labor and capital owning classes. One has a hedge against bad decisions based on the backs and labor of the other.

[dr_dshiv]

The U.S. government's total revenue is estimated to be $4.71 trillion for FY 2023.

[npilk]

The $32 trillion figure in the letter is tax revenue over the decade ending in 2021. Berkshire's $32 billion (0.1%) is over the same 10-year period.