General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBuffett speaks out of both sides of his mouth. While talking a good talk,
for the wealthy paying their fair share, all the while his jet company has been spending millions lobbying for tax cuts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/01/warren-buffett-jet-company-_n_1313351.html
"Buffett's belabored secretary has become such a ubiquitous gambit in the tax debate that she was invited to attend the president's State of the Union address as an honored guest. Buffett's pleading with Congress to hike his tax rate has grown so incessant that Republicans routinely suggest the Omaha billionaire should simply, as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie put it, "write a check and shut up."
But when a Buffett company had a chance to tackle both problems, it chose to do the opposite. And it spent handsomely on K Street to get it done.
Berkshire Hathaway-owned NetJets Inc. spent more than $2.5 million on a squadron of lobbyists who successfully crafted tax legislation to benefit a handful of private jet companies, according to a HuffPost analysis of lobbying disclosure records."
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What a farce! You cannot trust anyone that's part of the 1%. Once again, we are left with the appearance of a few token "fights" to do what's right....Buffett needs to explain this one, big time.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)It basically separates out private jets from commercial jets, for tax assessments used to modernize the airplane industry. It's more complicated than that, but that's basically what it seems to be.
I was surprised that private jets would be treated the same as commercial airliners, actually.
Everyone tries to pay the least amount of taxes he can, even companies. So even if that's the case here, and it isn't necessarily so, that is fine. Its position was that it was being illegally taxed like commercial airliners, and there is a lawsuit pending about it.
This is reasonable legislation. I don't see any hypocrisy here and I don't begrudge lobbying for things that are put right or as they should be.