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Warren Buffett's Company Hasn't Paid All Taxes Owed In Years, Media Mum
By Noel Sheppard
NewsBusters
August 29, 2011 | 17:28
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/08/29/warren-buffetts-company-hasnt-paid-taxes-years-media-mum
Two weeks ago, when billionaire Warren Buffett called for higher taxes on rich people like him, the liberal media predictably gushed and fawned.
Yet when Americans for Better Government revealed last week that Buffett's company Berkshire Hathaway has been in an almost decade-long dispute with the IRS over how much taxes it owes, these same press members couldn't care less:
According to Berkshire Hathaway’s own annual report — see Note 15 on pp. 54-56 — the company has been in a years-long dispute over its federal tax bills.
According to the report, “We anticipate that we will resolve all adjustments proposed by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (‘IRS’) for the 2002 through 2004 tax years at the IRS Appeals Division within the next 12 months. The IRS has completed its examination of our consolidated U.S. federal income tax returns for the 2005 and 2006 tax years and the proposed adjustments are currently being reviewed by the IRS Appeals Division process. The IRS is currently auditing our consolidated U.S. federal income tax returns for the 2007 through 2009 tax years.”
Americans for Limited Government researcher Richard McCarty, who was alerted to the controversy by a federal government lawyer, said, “The company has been short-changing the tax collection agency for much of the past decade. Mr. Buffett’s company has not fully settled its tax bills from 2002-2009. Yet he says he’d happily pay more. Except the IRS has apparently been asking him to pay more going on nine years.”
Imagine for a moment if nine days after Donald Trump or the Koch Brothers penned an op-ed in the New York Times wherein they pointed fingers at people for not paying their "fair share" of taxes it was revealed that one of their companies had been fighting with the IRS over taxes its owed since 2002. You think the media would have been interested in such a story?
Probably as much as a faux pas by Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann, right?
Yet Google News and LexisNexis searches have identified that since the ABG piece was published last Wednesday, the only major media outlet to reveal Buffett's hypocrisy was the New York Post Monday.
Other than that, not a word about this on television or in print.
It seems blatant hypocrisy from rich Obama supporters isn't newsworthy.
I wonder why.
The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted. ~ D.H. Lawrence |
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