Increase my taxes, says Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett has called for America's very wealthiest to pay substantially more tax in the veteran investor's most strident contribution yet to a debate exposing deep divisions on how to fire the country's recovery.
Warren Buffett: 'We have it better than we've ever had it' Photo: AFP/GETTY
"I think people at the high end, people like myself, should be paying a lot more in taxes," the billionaire investor and founder of Berkshire Hathaway said. "We have it better than we've ever had it."
With America's economic recovery still fragile, politicians on Capitol Hill need to decide before the end of the year whether to extend tax cuts first introduced by President George W. Bush in 2001 and then deepened in 2003. President Obama and most of the Democrats favour extending them for all families earning under $250,000 (£156,000) a year, or roughly 98pc of US taxpayers. Many republicans and some Democrats argue they should be extended to even the very richest, claiming that it is this group who are more likely to invest and create jobs.
Mr Buffett, ranked America's second-richest man with an estimated fortune of $45bn (£28bn), told ABC News that "the rich are always going to say, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years and I hope the American public is catching on."
He said he would consider cutting taxes further for the lower and middle class, and possibly the upper middle class too.
A wise man
