Tax hypocrisy where we shouldn't expect it

Warren Buffett, the billionaire businessman and investor, well-known in America’s political community for his public proclamations that he is willing to pay more taxes and that his fellow billionaires should join him in his fight to repeal the U.S. tax code, has himself in a little pickle.

It seems that while Buffett takes to the airwaves to decry the nation’s unfair tax structure — which allows the nation’s wealthiest people to pay lower income tax rates than the middle class due to the fact that capital gains are taxed at lower rates then salaried income — his company, Berkshire Hathaway, is lobbying Congress for reduced corporate tax rates.

Buffett’s offering himself as the sacrificial lamb for the “top 1 percent” was highlighted during President Obama’s State of the Union address, when the president pointed out that Buffett’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, paid higher tax rates on her 2010 income than Buffett. Buffett and Bosanek became the poster children for Obama’s case for increasing the tax rate on the nation’s wealthiest and strengthening what he called the economic fairness of our nation.

In fact, the president nicknamed his quest in Congress to protect the middle class the “Buffett Rule.” It would require those earning more than $1 million a year to pay a tax rate of at least 30 percent. However, as the Wall Street Journal has been reporting, the “Oracle of Omaha” stepped on Obama’s toes.

Over the past three years, NetJets Inc., a private-jet company owned by Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has spent more than $1 million lobbying Congress to cut a user fee, a move that would significantly benefit customers who either buy or lease the company’s planes. According to the Journal, the action “will save customers of NetJets and other similar companies roughly $83 million over about four years, according to congressional estimates.”