Tax Philanthropists: The Rich Who Give to the Government


Warren Buffett says rich people like him should pay more taxes. Senator Mitch McConnell said if Buffett wanted to pay more, all he had to do was “send in a check.”

The “send in a check” argument, however, isn’t quite as simple as it seems. As Buffett recently pointed out, rich people sending in voluntary checks to the government wouldn’t make a dent in the budget. Simply put “not enough people would do it.”

Some new research suggests he’s probably right. Philip Maymin, an assistant professor of finance and risk engineering at Polytechnic Institute of New York University, dug up data on how much money Americans give voluntarily to the U.S. Treasury.  We can call them the “tax philanthropists.”

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