Billions Must Cope

In 2005 Bill Gates and Warren Buffett told 92 Nebraska students how they could legally live the rest of their lives without paying a dollar of income tax. Only students could ask. Neither man saw a question in advance. One lunch with Buffett sold for $19 million in 2022. Fifty-five minutes of him and Gates answering these students is free. That September Forbes ranked them first and second in America: Gates at $51 billion, Buffett at $40 billion. The video is Nebraska public television's cut of that afternoon at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Buffett's old school. Between jokes about Halo 2 and losing at ping-pong to a nine-year-old, they lay out six rules. The newspaper test. Before any decision, imagine a smart, unfriendly reporter writing it up for your family tomorrow. Anything close to the line is out. The blank calendar. Gates said one of his favorite lessons from Buffett was a calendar with almost nothing in it. You have to be good at saying no. No committees. Buffett said brilliant investment decisions never come out of a large committee. Poll enough people and you buy what everyone already owns. You are the asset. Getting comfortable with public speaking, he said, pays off for 50 or 60 years, and avoiding it costs you just as long. Omissions. His worst mistakes never hit a statement: about $10 billion in profits from deals he understood and skipped, or made too small. The unsold gain. Tax arrives when you sell. His version: hold the stock, borrow against it every year to live on, and let the estate pay off the loan. He said he could have done it for decades and called it very unfair. His 1989 letter to shareholders has the math. Double $1 twenty times, selling after each double at a 34 percent tax, and you end with about $25,250. Hold through all twenty doubles and sell once, and you keep about $692,000. Same returns. The only difference is when the tax gets paid. "They have really taken care of the rich." That is Buffett on the cuts that took capital gains and dividends to a 15 percent tax. Gates answered: "I go along with that wholeheartedly." Everyone in his office paid payroll tax on their first $90,000 plus income tax, and he said their rate was often the same as his, maybe higher. Every paycheck you get loses 7.65 percent before income tax starts. A stock that rises and stays unsold has paid nothing. The program is free on YouTube. The 1989 letter is free on Berkshire's website. Billionaires do not avoid income tax by earning less. They avoid it by selling less. Price the tax bill before you cash out your next winner.