A Quote by Charlie Munger
You'll better understand the evil when top audit firms started selling fraudulent tax shelters when I tell you that one told me that they're better [than the others] because they only sold [the schemes] to their top-20 clients, so no-one would notice.
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The Tax Division is committed to prosecuting accountants who assist their clients in fraudulent tax schemes.
The lawyers have escaped most criticism [and undeservedly so]. The tax shelters [were approved by lawyers, who got paid huge commissions to do so] and every miscreant had a high-falutin' lawyer at his side. Why don't more law firms vote with their feet and not take clients who have signs on them that say, "I'm a skunk and will be hard to handle?" I've noticed that firms that avoid trouble over long periods of time have an institutional process that tunes bad clients out. Boy, if I were running a law firm, I'd want a system like that because a lot of firms have a lot of bad clients.
I talked to one accountant, a very nice fellow who I would have been glad to have his family marry into mine. He said, "What these other accounting firms have done is very unethical. The [tax avoidance scheme] works best if it's not found out [by the IRS], so we only give it to our best clients, not the rest, so it's unlikely to be discovered. So my firm is better than the others." [Laughter] I'm not kidding. And he was a perfectly nice man. People just follow the crowd...Their mind just drifts off in a ghastly way.
If top marginal income tax rates are set too high, they discourage productive economic activity. In the limit, a top marginal income tax rate of 100 percent would mean that taxpayers would gain nothing from working harder or investing more. In contrast, a higher top marginal rate on consumption would actually encourage savings and investment. A top marginal consumption tax rate of 100 percent would simply mean that if a wealthy family spent an extra dollar, it would also owe an additional dollar of tax.
In the last year I have gained a lot of experience because I have been playing against top players and realized what things to work on to get better. Top players basically tell you what your weaknesses are on the court.
I would tell kids not be like me, but to try and be better than me. Because I always wanted to be better than everyone I was around. That's what drove me. I wanted to be better than my role models. I'm super competitive.
Whenever the investor sold out in an upswing as soon as the top level of the previous well-recognized bull market was reached, he had a chance in the next bear market to buy back at one third (or better) below his selling price.
I think that if you have a single payer system and an opt-out for people who want to pay more [for better service, etc.], I think it would be better - and I think we'll eventually get there. It wouldn't be better at the top - [our current system] is the best in the world at the top. But the waste in the present system is awesome and we do get some very perverse incentives.
I will say I would leave many of the decisions of some of the things you mentioned to the generals, the admirals, the people on top, and we get some of the - the Congressmen just mentioned to me and I - I think it's true 100 percent, you get your top enlisted people in that and you have some discussions with some of these top enlisted people who know it better than probably anybody.
The biggest shortage in the world is not oil or food-it's leadership. Why is it such a scarce resource? Because egos get involved. Most people in top positions think they are better than somebody else, think they need something better than somebody else. It's economic assets, it's status, it's all those other things that prevent the people at the top from subordinating themselves totally to the people they lead. It is not socialism. Leaders get paid a lot more than those they lead, they get paid for their knowledge and skill...but they are no better as a person.
You will see nowadays TV's Top 20 and Radio's Top 20 tend to be the same. And then there are films that never reach to mass audience, and because of that, their soundtrack also dies a silent death.
I think when people hear my book on Audible, they'll hear the inflection in my voice, the tone, and understand me a little bit better and understand my family a little bit better in the ways that I tell the stories. Some are told with laughter, and some are told with sadness.
For the players, these top, top, top games or these top, top, top events - like a World Cup or a European Championship - are not common but, of course, something special.
The income tax only taxed the Rockefellers, the Morgans and the Vanderbilts. It was aimed at the top 4 percent, and the top rate then in 1913, was 7 percent. Woodrow Wilson had a big ceremony and said, "I'm delighted to be president at the creation of this popular new tax."
Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent. They encourage it. They understand that, whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told they might be wrong, it is more than offset by the fact that the information will help them make better decisions.
You talk to tax attorneys who are not politically motivated, and they will tell you they would never advise their client to release any tax information in the course of an audit.
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