Buffett says he's still paying lower tax rate than his secretary

[Peter_Tersteeg]

I'm pretty sure that I could structure my income so that I earn $1 more than my PA yet still pay less tax. As property investors we all get a few tax deductions, some of them (like depreciation) don't have any day to day effect on cashflow.

Being self employed I also have a lot of discression over what I pay myself and thus how much tax I pay. You can bet your last dollar that I'm optimising my financial situation to pay as little tax as possible.

I'm also willing to bet that I'm contributing a lot more money to charities than the average person out there.

 

[nhg]

Kerry Packers never explained where the govt wasn't spending its money well. That would be interesting to know.

The way government departments are set up. They are given a budget. If they can't 'justify' their budget by not spending it in a year. It is reduced the following year.

To overcome this, the organisations blow money at the end of each financial year to claim their budget is too small, so it gets increased, and so on and so forth.

I know this... because I use to do it when I worked in the government. I hated it, protested against it, but if I didn't they'd half my budget.

I use to give a relatively significant % of my income to charity, and then realised, charities aren't much better. Now i'm all for social-enterprise as oppose to just charities.

As stated before, I also pay less in tax than my counterparts on the same pay and position as me.

 

[SuiCid3]

The way government departments are set up. They are given a budget. If they can't 'justify' their budget by not spending it in a year. It is reduced the following year.

To overcome this, the organisations blow money at the end of each financial year to claim their budget is too small, so it gets increased, and so on and so forth.

I know this... because I use to do it when I worked in the government. I hated it, protested against it, but if I didn't they'd half my budget.

I use to give a relatively significant % of my income to charity, and then realised, charities aren't much better. Now i'm all for social-enterprise as oppose to just charities.

As stated before, I also pay less in tax than my counterparts on the same pay and position as me.

My other half used to work as a youth worker.
Initially she worked for a private NFP organisation who had limited government funding. They really had to watch their budget.
She later moved to a 100% government funded NFP organisation.
She was told that they needed to order thousands of dollars worth of stationary to keep their budget at a certain level otherwise the government would decrease their funding. Thousands of dollars spent on useless stationary because of this when it could have been spent on things that mattered.

 

[esh]

Sounds like a dumb system, lets not forget all taking advantage of Centrelink

 

[datto]

So much waste.

Govt departments waste money so that they can get more money next financial year (to waste again), never ending cycle.

I wonder if private business runs on the lean, or do they waste money as well (they probally waste money to get a tax advantage or a govt grant lol)