While some billionaires threaten to relocate over the threat of higher taxes, the Oracle of Omaha is proudly writing checks to the IRS — big ones.
Warren Buffett has never been one to hide behind tax shelters or complain about what he owes Uncle Sam. At Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting in 2024, the then-CEO — and who remains chairman — made a striking statement about corporate taxation. It wasn’t a political speech or a carefully rehearsed soundbite. It was vintage Buffett: straightforward, grounded, and backed by numbers that are hard to argue with.
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Berkshire Hathaway, he told the assembled shareholders, sent a check for over $5 billion to the U.S. federal government the previous year. And if just 800 other companies had done the same? “No other person in the United States would have had to pay a dime of federal taxes,” he said. “Whether income taxes, no Social Security taxes, no estate taxes — up and down the line.”
It was the kind of line that makes an arena full of shareholders applaud — not because it was rehearsed, but because it was true.
“We’ll Pay It”
Buffett has long been transparent about how he views the relationship between profitable companies and the government. At the meeting, he framed it in characteristically simple terms. “The federal government owns a part of the earnings of the business we make,” he said. “They don’t own the assets, but they own a percentage of the earnings. And they can change that percentage any year.”
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His response to that possibility was remarkably unbothered: “We’ll pay it.”
There was no talk of restructuring, relocating, or lobbying for loopholes. Just a plainspoken acceptance that taxation is part of the deal — and one he considers fair.
Rather than treating that as a critique of others, Buffett turned it inward. “I would hope things develop well enough with Berkshire that we say we’re in the 800 club,” he said, “and maybe even move up a few notches.”
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A Different Kind of Billionaire
Buffett’s stance on taxes is hardly new, but it stands in increasingly sharp contrast to the broader conversation happening among the ultra-wealthy.
Buffett’s message runs in the opposite direction entirely. He has long credited the United States with creating the conditions that made Berkshire Hathaway’s success possible, and he sees paying taxes as a form of giving back to the system that enabled it. “I think it’s appropriate,” he said at the meeting, “that a country that has been as generous to our owners” should receive something in return.
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