Monday, August 15, 2011

Warren Buffet on Shared Tax Sacrifice

Despite my being a libertarian, I find it completely annoying that people ascribe their reluctance to pay taxes on non-existent reasons. Writing in the NYT, Warren Buffet bells the cat by stating and refuting the unreasonable stances maintained by politicians who are opposed to taxation by using wealthy investors as cover. Many people assume that the claim that taxation of incomes reduces incentives for investments is established in theory and empirically without question.warren Buffet states that the idea that all taxation is harmful to investment is ideologically driven but is not supported by his own experience or knowledge. hHe makes a valid case that is hard to refute but will not necessarily shut up the ideologues of zero taxation.  

Because the article speaks for itself, I see no need to paraphrase it as I am not close to paying US$ 6 million in annual income taxes and neither do I pay income taxes to the US government. However, I will state that it is understandable for any person to desire to keep as much of his earned income as is possible but that there is no reason to think that a no tax movement is automatically consistent with being necessarily libertarian. In other words, it is not honest to overstate the need to maintain low tax regime or the value of absolving super-rich from paying taxes.     

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