By: Clarissa Dellinger

“Our leaders have asked for ‘shared sacrifice,’ but when they did the asking, they spared me,” Warren Buffett wrote recently in the New York Times. “I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They too were left untouched.”

He continues, “While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as ‘carried interest,’ thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate.” He noted that others who own stock index figures for maybe ten minutes have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent like a long-term investment.

According to Buffett, chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, he paid only 17.4 percent of his taxable income in federal taxes last year, a lower percentage than paid by any of the other employees in his office.

Since 1992, he writes that the IRS compiled data from the returns of 400 Americans reporting the largest incomes. In 1992, the top 400 paid 29.2 percent on aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion. In 2008: they paid 21.5 percent on aggregate taxable income of $90.9 billion; eighty-eight of the 400 reported no wages at all, but reported capital gains.

To those who would argue that higher rates hurt job creation, “I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.”

Twelve members of Congress are charged with devising a plan to reduce the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion, but “It’s vital that they achieve far more than that.” His first suggestion: “Pare down some of the future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill.” For those making more than $1 million (236,883 households in 2009), “I would raise rates immediately on taxable income including dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more (8,274 in 2009), I would suggest an additional increase in rate.”