Thread: Buffett Calls Trump’s Bluff and Releases His Tax Data

Buffett Calls Trump’s Bluff and Releases His Tax Data

By PATRICIA COHEN OCT. 10, 2016

Warren E. Buffett is not running for president. But on Monday, Mr. Buffett, the billionaire investor, volunteered more detailed information about his income taxes than Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee, ever has.

Mr. Buffett released the information after essentially being called out by Mr. Trump during Sunday night’s presidential debate.

Acknowledging for the first time that he had avoided paying federal income taxes for years by claiming nearly a billion dollars in losses in 1995, Mr. Trump then tried to shift attention to his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, accusing some of her wealthy supporters of exploiting tax laws to their own advantage.

“Many of her friends took bigger deductions,” Mr. Trump said. “Warren Buffett took a massive deduction.”

Actually, he did not.

“I have paid federal income tax every year since 1944,” Mr. Buffett wrote in a letter released Monday.

“My 2015 return shows adjusted gross income of $11,563,931,” he revealed. “My deductions totaled $5,477,694.” About two-thirds of those represented charitable contributions, he said. Most of the rest were related to Mr. Buffett’s state income tax payments.

Mr. Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in the world, went on to say: “My federal income tax for the year was $1,845,557. Returns for previous years are of a similar nature in respect to contributions, deductions and tax rates.”

Last year, Mr. Buffett paid about 16 percent of his reported income in federal income taxes.

“I have copies of all 72 of my returns,” Mr. Buffett added, “and none uses a carry forward,” the provision that allows taxpayers like Mr. Trump to use losses from one year to avoid paying personal federal income taxes both on some previous tax returns and in future years.

Mr. Trump had previously claimed, without producing any evidence, that Mr. Buffett declared $873 million in losses.

As it turns out, the charitable contributions that Mr. Buffett did deduct from his income make up just a tiny portion of the more than $2.85 billion he donated to charity last year, he said. The reason is that the tax code limits the amount that an individual can claim in charitable deductions. Mr. Buffett, 86, has pledged to give most of his $65 billion fortune away.

By contrast, Mr. Trump’s own charitable foundations — and his claims about his personal contributions — have come under scrutiny. Last week the New York attorney general ordered the Donald J. Trump Foundation to stop soliciting donations in the state because it lacked the required registration. And many of the donations that Mr. Trump had publicly boasted of turned out to have come from other people’s pockets, like those who had given money to the Trump Foundation.

Three pages of Mr. Trump’s income tax returns from 1995 obtained by The New York Times show that he claimed $916 million in losses.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly refused to release his federal income tax returns, defying the practice of presidential candidates going back four decades. He and his campaign have offered varying reasons, but the excuse most frequently invoked is that he is under audit by the Internal Revenue Service. The I.R.S. said that an audit does not prevent Mr. Trump from making his returns public.

Mr. Buffett made the same point. “I have been audited by the I.R.S. multiple times and am currently being audited,” he wrote in the letter. “I have no problem in releasing my tax information while under audit. Neither would Mr. Trump — at least he would have no legal problem.”

The Trump campaign had no comment on Mr. Buffett’s letter.

Mr. Buffett’s tax strategies were drawn into the debate when Mr. Trump blamed Mrs. Clinton for not doing more when she was a senator to fix the tax code and close loopholes that favored Wall Street and wealthy campaign donors. Mrs. Clinton, who has pledged to raise taxes on rich Americans, while Mr. Trump’s plans would sharply reduce them, responded that a Republican-controlled Congress had repeatedly blocked such efforts.

Mr. Buffett declined to comment further on his letter. George Soros, another billionaire entrepreneur who has supported the Clinton campaign, was also singled out by Mr. Trump for claiming outsize deductions of $1.5 billion on his taxes. A spokesman for Mr. Soros, Michael Vachon, said he had no comment.

Mr. Buffett has frequently criticized tax laws and loopholes for enabling him to pay a smaller share of his income in taxes than his secretary. The so-called Buffett rule, which has been endorsed by Mrs. Clinton, would require people who earn more than $5 million to pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes.

Mr. Buffett did concede that his tax payments have, at times, been much smaller. In 1944, he admitted, when he was just 13, “I owed only $7 in tax that year.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/bu...turn.html?_r=0

Hmmmmm.

Well, what do you call this, Patricia Cohen?

Warren Buffett admits to $873 million mistake
Alex Crippen
Saturday, 1 Mar 2014 | 11:08 AM ETCNBC.com
Warren Buffett is famous for his stock-picking ability, but he also puts a substantial amount of Berkshire Hathaway's money in bonds.

Those transactions don't get a lot of attention. Unlike the contents of its stock portfolio that must be filed with the SEC four times a year, Berkshire doesn't have to publicly disclose its debt holdings.

In his letter to shareholders released Saturday, however, Buffett admitted to a money-losing bond buy involving Energy Future Holdings.

"Most of you have never heard" of the company, he wrote. "Consider yourselves lucky; I certainly wish I hadn't."

Buffett said he decided to buy about $2 billion of EFH's debt when it was created in 2007 as part of a leveraged buyout of Texas electric utility assets.

He made that decision "without consulting with (business partner) Charlie (Munger). That was a big mistake."

Buffett wrote that unless there's a big increase in natural gas prices, the company will "almost certainly" file for bankruptcy protection this year.

Last year, Berkshire sold the bonds for $259 million. Adding back the $837 million received in cash interest, Buffett's decision produced a pre-tax loss of $873 million.

"Next time," Buffett promised, "I'll call Charlie."

http://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/01/warre...n-mistake.html

________________________

That's the $873 million loss that Trump is referring to. Is Warren Buffett losing it? Does he not remember his $873 million loss 2 years ago? Or is Buffet considering bankruptcy protection unless natural gas prices rise without even filling out his tax returns properly? Or is Buffet now just another Clinton Liar Deceiver??!!!

Shame on you Warren Buffet. You can support and vote for whomever you want, but by supporting Hillary Clinton and getting in bed with scum like the Clintons, you've turned yourself into a sewer rat just like them.

And shame shame shame on you Patricia Cohen. You take Warren Buffet's letter as gospel without even doing a google search on what Trump said to find out if Buffet is being truthful? BIAS!! BIAS!! BIAS!!

The New York Times is rotten to the core.

Hillary used the same deduction also. The entire "tax loophole" ,that Trump supposedly abused, controversy has just been another lying Hillary spin job targeting the regular folks that don't deal with anything more complex than a 1040. IMO