The American Association of Billionaires, (AAB) the tax lobbying group for the super-rich, has announced a nationwide billionaire’s strike if taxes on billionaires are raised “even one penny.”
“We’re not doing it for ourselves, but for the country as a whole,” said Dennis DaPalma, spokesperson for the AAB. “Billionaires play an important role in our economy, and higher taxes for billionaires would hurt everyone, especially the poor.”
Not all billionaires agree. In an excerpt from a 2005 television program available on YouTube, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, the two richest men in America according to the Forbes 400 rankings, said they favored higher taxes for the rich, positions they continue to hold.
“I think Bill and I should pay a higher tax rate on the income we get,” said Buffet. “It’s a rate that’s less than half the tax rate that I was paying twenty-five years ago when I was making a lot less money. They have really taken care of the rich.”
Gates agreed. “I go along with that wholeheartedly,” he said. “The rich should bear a somewhat higher proportion of the burden than they do today.”
“With the money they’ve got that’s easy for Gates and Buffet to say,” said DaPalma. “Gates has $54 billion and Buffet has $45 billion. The next wealthiest man, Larry Ellison, has just $27 billion—about half of what Gates has. But not everyone is that well off. More than 200 billionaires have only $1 to $2 billion. Life’s a lot different down there.”
DaPalma, who jokes that his net worth is “only $282 million, and that’s on a good day,” aspires to become a billionaire. “I don’t' expect to be a guy like Gates or Buffett who can just throw money around on taxes,” he said, “but I do hope to become actually rich some day. It’s the American Dream.”
If the billionaires go on strike DaPalma says he will strike in sympathy, and says he knows a lot of other millionaires who will join him.
Asked about his own taxes, DaPalma proudly reported that by careful tax planning he paid $17.62 last year, down from $112.87 the year before. “That’s a fair share,” he said, “and it’s about as much as any American—rich or poor—should have to pay.”
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