He writes,

Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent 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 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

His prescription is to raise taxes on capital income, otherwise known as savings. He is totally wrong about this. Editorial pages should stop coddling him by running his op-eds.

The statistic I would like to see is the amount of tax paid relative to consumption. By that measure, it is possible that Buffett’s tax rate was more than 100 percent.

I do not care if he pays very little tax on saving. I would rather he pay zero tax on saving. His taxes are too high, not too low.