She’s been accused of funneling money to French politicians, but now she wants to hand it over in the daylight: Liliane Bettencourt, the billionaire heiress of the L’Oréal cosmetics fortune, has joined fifteen other wealthy French citizens in offering to pay higher taxes. As president Nicolas Sarkozy’s government hashes out a plan to save the French state 10 billion euros next year, the group wrote, called for an “exceptional contribution” from the country’s wealthiest business leaders. "We are aware that we have fully benefited from the French model and European environment to which we are attached and that we want to help preserve them,” the wrote in the petition, posted on the website of the magazine Le Nouvel Observateur. The proposed tax would be temporary, and target the very wealthiest French citizens as the government also worked to reform spending.
For years, the Oracle of Omaha has been vocal in his criticism of the weaknesses of the American tax system and his willingness to give more money to the federal government. In 2007, at a New York fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, he carped to the crowd, “The 400 of us pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent.”
In an op-ed in the New York Times, Buffett grew even more insistent. “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,” he wrote, noting that many investment managers pay only a 15 percent tax rate. He even detailed his own tax return: The $6,938,744 he paid last year was just 17.4 percent of his taxable income. Buffett attacks the idea that higher taxes lead to lower investment, writing, “People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off.” He suggested immediately raising taxes on people earning more than $1 million, with an additional hike for those earning more than $10 million.
In a town-hall meeting hosted by Facebook in April, President Obama pitched the idea of greater taxes on the wealthiest members of society. In response, Zuckerberg said succinctly, “I’m cool with that.” Zuckerberg’s wealth was last estimated by Forbes at $13.5 billion. But more than a billionaire for the twentysomething set, Zuckerberg has been immortalized as a cultural figurehead; Vanity Fair called him America’s “new Caesar” and Time last year anointed him “Person of the Year.” In addition to his apparent willingness to pay more taxes, he agreed to fork over $100 million to Newark last year (which would provide a huge tax benefit) and he’s signed up to give the majority of his wealth to philanthropic causes as part of Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s The Giving Pledge.
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The co-founder of Microsoft is willing to pay more in taxes from his own pocket, and he thinks all top earners should follow suit. Last year, he supported a ballot initiative in Washington state, launched by his father Bill Gates Sr., that would have created a new state income tax for those earning at least $200,000. (The initiative was ultimately defeated.) “I voted yes and I was hoping that it would pass. But that’s done now,” Gates has said of the failed measure.
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The businessman who built and lost his wealth as founder of CNN and the Turner cable networks and billionaire signatory of The Giving Pledge has long been a proponent of philanthropic donations. Asked last year on MSNBC whether he would be in favor of keeping his tax cut, Turner said he would not but that he gives away so much money he doesn’t pay much in taxes.
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Asked by Christiane Amanpour last year whether he disagreed with the notion that wealthy Americans should be able to retain their personal wealth as a reward for success, Steyer answered with an emphatic no. As founder of Farallon Capital Management, Steyer’s wealth was estimated to be $1.2 billion in 2008. “I think anyone who doesn’t give credit to the system that they are born into is taking an awful lot onto themselves,” Steyer told Amanpour. “I mean, I really think that people have sacrificed a lot more than a little tax money to make that system available for all of us."
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Last year, nearly 100 millionaires signed a petition addressed to President Obama asking him to allow tax cuts on incomes greater the $1 million to expire as scheduled. Morris Pearl, managing director of the prominent investment-management firm BlackRock, was one of the signatories. He was reportedly “sad” that President Obama agreed to extend the tax cuts. The appeal Pearl signed pleaded for an expiration of the tax cuts, “for the fiscal health of our nation and the well-being of our fellow citizens."
Morris Pearl
Dubbed a “demi-billionare hedge-fund operator,” Steinhardt has one of the country’s most colorful paths to financial success and philanthropic legacy. The son of a convicted jewelry fence and one the most successful early hedge-fund managers, Steinhardt signed the second installment of the Patriotic Millionaires letter pleading for American leaders to raise taxes “for the good of the country.”
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Actor Mark Ruffalo, one of the self-professed wealthy residents of New York state, opted to be the face of the campaign by the New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, which was drafted as an open letter to the New York governor to renew the “millionaire’s tax.” “Many of us New Yorkers are troubled that you’re giving a $5 billion tax cut to 2 percent of New York’s most wealthy while cutting $9 billion from education and social services for the rest of New Yorkers,” Ruffalo said in the video.
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Liman is one of the producers behind Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Bourne Identity, and Fair Game. He’s also one of the millionaires who copped to wanting to pay more in taxes in order to help lift the economic fortunes of the country. According to the letter he signed, he and other millionaires “have done very well over the last several years. Now, during our nation’s moment of need, we are eager to do our fair share.”
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As Carmela Soprano, Falco reportedly pulled in more than $500,000 per episode, but she’s happy to give some of those millions to the government to unburden the less fortunate. Along with Moby and Paul Haggis, Falco was part of a Hollywood branch of the Patriotic Millionaires pledge.
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"The small monetary sacrifice is both an ethical and patriotic decision, made in the hopes of allowing the United States of America to continue to be a leader economically, politically and morally,” Gruener has said. Last year, the founder of Ask.com and co-founder of venture-capital firm Alta Partners penned an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times acknowledging that he’s in the top echelon of American earners but has paid the lowest rates of personal income in the last decade—ostensibly some of the most lucrative of his 30-year career.
Garret, a rocket scientist and Google software engineer turned angel investor, is a part of the Silicon Valley set who has decried the tax benefits that are granted to the wealthiest Americans. In a press release, he argued that raising the tax liabilities of the wealthy is a significant part of the work needed to eliminate the deficit. “We have only three choices: Cut spending, raise taxes, or go bankrupt. Congress seems to be utterly incapable of cutting spending, and I don’t want the country to go bankrupt,” Garret said.
