Buffett's Challenge

So Warren Buffett has gone public with his income and tax payment of this last year:

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett divulged to a Republican congressman yesterday that he made more than $62 million in 2010 and that just 17.4 percent of his taxable income was taxed.

In addition, he has implored other billionaires to come out with their tax returns:

"What would be useful would be to get more of the ultra rich to publish their returns," Buffett wrote. "If you could get other ultra rich Americans to publish their returns along with mine, that would be very useful to the tax dialogue and intelligent reform. I stand ready and willing -- indeed eager -- to participate in this exercise."

The thing is that other billionaires have little desire to pay higher taxes:

A new poll of the Forbes 400 list by Salon.com finds that only 8 of the Forbes 400members would pay higher taxes, as Warren Buffett suggested in a New York Times op-ed in August. The problem with the Salon.com poll? Most of the Forbes 400 members didn’t respond to it. Salon doesn’t spell it out precisely, but it looks as if only 12 of the 400 billionaires bothered to reply.

Can you really blame them? Nobody willingly wants to pay higher taxes. If they have to pay the taxes, they'll pay the taxes. They can afford to as well. It's all a matter of just closing the loopholes. It's not an Obama thing, even Reagan hated the loopholes:

In the coming weeks, we'll see if Buffett actually releases his tax returns. If he does release them, I would not be surprised if one or two other billionaires followed suit. However, if you want them to pay higher taxes, you just need to close the loopholes. There is an unwillingness to do so because it will deter private giving. The millionaire tax that was proposed doesn't really work either because it opens up a whole new way for government to tax private citizens. It is just a new way to invade a person's personal liberty.

I don't think there is any progress to be made on this issue until Buffett follows through on his own challenge.