I know it's Buffett, but this is great stuff.

[Shimmy]

Maybe this will help out NCVol (I doubt it but maybe)

Fair Tax =  conservative
Our current tax system = liberal (including, as you have pointed out, liberal acting GOP)

[NCVol]

What did he pay on the basis?

I'm not sure what your question is.  Since he started the company from scratch, he paid effectively nothing for the stock. 

I suppose you're referring to the fact that BRK pays corporate income taxes?  That's the talking point today, so maybe that's your point.  And I sort of get this line of thought when the company in question is a small business, where the CEO is the guy running it, and every major decision is his, it's his life, really, the place he spends 100 hours a week, etc. 

But when it's Buffett buying, say, 1,000,000 shares of GE, this example doesn't make sense.  Did Buffett "earn" the profits of GE?  No, the thousands of employees of GE earned a profit.  In fact the employees earned far more than the amount they were paid for their labor, which leaves some profits to be distributed to Buffett as a stockholder.  Furthermore, taxes are a cost of doing business, like utilities and rent and payroll.  If a company receives no benefits from the U.S. and their taxes, move to Somalia - low, low taxes there!!! 

Further, the price of their products reflects the amount of taxes they have to pay, and so the cost of the taxes is born by consumers, employees who take a lower wage than otherwise because of the need to pay taxes, and by investors.  The incidence, who pays the tax, depends on all kinds of factors, such as the competitiveness of the industry, the demand for labor, etc. but it's simply dishonest hackery, aka a lie, to assert that 100% of it is born by the investor class.  It's simply not and right wingers when it's convenient point this out all the time - "a corporation can't pay taxes, people pay taxes!!!"  Right, and those people are customers, employees AND owners. 

At the end of the day, Buffett makes his income investing, and for some reason we say that he should pay a tax of 15% on THAT type of income.  But if you earn a salary, you should pay payroll tax of 15.3%, plus income taxes up to 35% on THAT type of income.  And for the ultra wealthy, there are a number of ways to convert ordinary income, e.g. salary, into capital gains, so they do that.  Look at the compensation of any CEO - reasonable salary, HUGE gains from stock options and stock grants. They're both methods to pay the CEO for services, but we tax one method at a very preferential rate. 

That's what is broken.  And the GOP wants to say to the CEO class - if you can convert your salary into capital gains, your tax bill will be ZERO and it will be for the bulk of their pay since those kinds of conversions are relatively simple if you're a plutocrat.   

[NCVol]

Maybe this will help out NCVol (I doubt it but maybe)

Fair Tax =  conservative
Our current tax system = liberal (including, as you have pointed out, liberal acting GOP)

You'll have to help me out on that.  Why is a sales tax conservative? 

It's also highly regressive, since as people move up the income scale they consume a smaller share of their income, which means, naturally, that their effective tax rate goes down.  Buffett would have an effective income tax of near zero, as would Romney, while a middle class couple raising a family might pay 30% of their income in taxes.  It IS a nice plan for the plutocrats, I'll give you that much.  Whether that is "conservative" or not I suppose depends on how you define the term. 

Heck, if we want to go back to the Founders, tariffs were "conservative" since that used to be our sole source of revenue.  I'm all for that kind of tax!  It is also a tax on consuming foreign made goods, which drives up the price of domestic goods, but it has the advantage of encouraging domestic production, and therefore U.S. jobs, and discouraging relocating those jobs to third world hellholes in a global race to the bottom. 

[Sasquatch]

But if you earn a salary, you should pay payroll tax of 15.3%, plus income taxes up to 35% on THAT type of income.  

Why doesn't Buffett or another democrat(ic) propose lowering this rate? AGAIN:

Not if Buffett took pay as income. He could then pay more in taxes and wouldn't have to bitch and whine so much.

Solution: lower HER taxes to a 15% base. Then she could buy even more real estate.

Another option is to lower her pay increasing the gap between Buffett and his workers, which is already substantial. 

[NCVol]

It is time to make the tax rate the same for everyone, cut out these 0% tax rates on capital gains, etc. If you make money off something, you pay a tax on it regardless of how you made the money. That would keep the rich from moving their money around to avoid paying taxes on it.

I understand a flatter tax, and maybe even a broader tax - I'd support a VAT, that everyone would pay, drug dealers, prostitutes, Wall Street crooks, etc.  But the reason why we've supported progressive taxes here for decades is the idea that ability to pay matters, and that 15% of the pay of a guy making minimum wage is painful, perhaps life altering - food OR drugs, rent OR getting an infected tooth pulled - but 15% of $22 million has actually NO impact whatsoever on Romney's life.  So he has $51,933 per DAY to spend instead of $61,100 per DAY....    

So I don't understand the appeal of a tax system that ignores this reality.  

Nothing will ever change with any of these because those that are in charge of the laws are rich themselves. Many are not going to take money from their own pockets to help the people they represent.

Right, we either elect wealthy people since they have the money to self finance or the connections to people WITH money to help them out, or we have wealthy people pouring $billions into the political system and therefore dictating policy.  It's why if you are worried about this aspect of our system, you should support publicly funded elections and a repeal of Citizens United, as a start.