Warren Buffett pays very little property tax too
Forbes magazine has taken a look at Warren Buffett to see what the simple-living billionaire investor pays in property taxes.
He’s lived in the same house in Omaha, Nebraska for a very long time and pays just $13,859 in annual property taxes.
Forbes did the research after Buffett drew lots of attention to himself a few months ago, saying he paid a very low rate of income taxes as well.
It was not too surprising that Bill Gates, the richest man in the U.S., who is worth $59 billion, has the highest property tax bill for his primary residence.
His home on Lake Washington in the high-end Seattle suburb of Medina, Washington, covering 6,131 square metres, had a 2011 property tax bill of $1.036 million.
Buffett kicked off the debate about the rich and taxes when he wrote in the New York Times in August that his federal tax bill was $6,938,744.
“That sounds like a lot of money,” he wrote.
“But what I paid was only 17.4% of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office.
“Their tax burdens ranged from 33% to 41% and averaged 36%,” Buffett wrote.
Buffett has lived in the same house in the central Dundee neighborhood of Omaha that he bought in 1958 for $31,500, according to Wikipedia. It is worth about $700,000.
Wikipedia also says he owns a $4 million house in Laguna Beach, California, but the Forbes survey just looked at the principal places of residence.
