For years, Warren Buffett has told the country that inherited fortunes deserve a heavier hand from the tax collector. He has championed the estate tax as a matter of fairness. Now his own roughly $140 billion is bound for family and charitable foundations, not the Treasury.
Let us be clear about what this is not. It is not fraud, evasion, or even a loophole in the pejorative sense. Directing wealth to philanthropy is lawful, ancient, and encouraged by the tax code itself. Mr. Buffett's giving is real, vast, and admirable in its stewardship of capital.
The contradiction, then, is not legal. It is moral posturing colliding with quiet self-interest. The nation's loudest advocate for taxing inherited wealth has arranged his estate so that the levy he champions never touches the bulk of it.
The Lesson Is Incentives, Not Hypocrisy
The honest conclusion is not that the rich are frauds. It is that even they respond to incentives. Give a man a lawful exit and the moral standing to praise the tax he escapes, and he will take both. That is human nature, not villainy.
“Give a man a lawful exit and he will take it. That is human nature.”
The deeper problem is a tax the wealthy can plan around while ordinary families cannot. Foundations, trusts, and advisers are the province of billionaires. The corner hardware store or the third-generation farm has no such machinery, and often sells to pay the bill.
The numbers come first. A tax that the very rich sidestep and the merely comfortable pay is neither fair nor efficient. Free enterprise is served by clear, low, broad-based rules that no lawyer can unravel, not by sermons the taxpayer cannot afford to follow. Principle beats posture.