Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) — Warren Buffett called on Congress to maintain the estate tax, saying that plans to repeal the levy would benefit a handful of the richest American families and widen U.S. income disparity.
Buffett, the billionaire chairman of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., told the Senate Finance Committee that advocates of repeal were “dead wrong” to call the levy a “death tax.”
It would be more appropriate to call it a “death present,” said Buffett, 77, who is the third-richest person in the world, according to Forbes Magazine. “A meaningful estate tax is needed to prevent our democracy from becoming a dynastic plutocracy.”