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(This is the Warren Buffett Watch newsletter, news and analysis on all things Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway. You can sign up here to receive it every Friday evening in your inbox.)
The special edition of this newsletter two weeks ago on Warren Buffett’s decision to speed up his annual donations from his $140 billion of Berkshire Hathaway shares to four family foundations generated an unusually large number of emails from readers.
Some praised his generosity, some questioned whether money going to foundations would really help people in need, especially elderly, impoverished Americans, and some accused Buffett of using philanthropy to avoid paying estate and capital gains taxes.
Buffett has often said it doesn’t bother him to pay taxes, and he takes pride in the billions Berkshire Hathaway has sent to Washington.
He believes he is “under-taxed in relation to what society has delivered to me,” and has often complained his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does when payroll taxes are taken into account, and because capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than ordinary income.
That led President Barack Obama to propose a “Buffett rule” that would have imposed a 30% minimum tax on Americans earnings more than $1 million a year. It was rejected by the Senate in 2012.
Even though he’s proud to pay taxes, Buffett joked in 1998, “I don’t send along any voluntary payments to the I.R.S, I want you to understand.”
In a 2017 interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” as Congress was considering a GOP-sponsored bill that would have eliminated the 40% estate tax over several years, Buffett and Becky Quick explored his views, touching on the tension between advocating for an estate tax while personally avoiding it:
watch nowVIDEO03:46Why Buffett opposes elimination of the estate taxCNBC Interviews
BECKY QUICK: You said earlier that this is not a tax reform bill. It’s a tax cut.
WARREN BUFFETT: A tax cut.
BECKY QUICK: What do you think about it?
WARREN BUFFETT: Well, I — I don’t think I need a tax cut.
But — for example, the current proposal eliminates the estate tax. And it’s not a death tax. There are going to be 2.6 million people die this year in the United States. And there’ll be 5,000 tax returns that people — estates that pay tax.
So if you start going to a funeral every month, it’s going to be 40 years on average before you go to one where there’s any estate tax due. It’s a very pejorative term.
The truth is if they pass the bill that — they’re talking about — I could leave $75 billion to a bunch of children, and grandchildren, and great-grandchildren— and if left it to 35 of them — they’d each have a couple billion dollars. They could put it out at 5 percent, have 100 million.
I mean, is that a great way to allocate resources in the United States? Because that’s what you’re doing with — for the tax code, is you’re affecting the allocation of resources.
So if they were lucky enough to come out of the right womb, have the right name, Buffett, they could sit there and build tombs for themselves like Egyptians — pharaohs never dreamt of.
They could — they could — they could do anything. And — and capitalism is all about intelligent allocation of resources.
Now, some people say, “Well, you don’t have to worry about that because they’ll blow it all.”
But if they (LAUGH) blow it all, that means that they — you know, that they’ve done some done things with some important resources. And that’s — that’s not good for capitalism. I don’t think it’s good for the children. I sure as — I sure don’t think it’s good for society when there’s a ton of un — inequality — to start with.
And — so I — I would — I think that’s a terrible mistake, for example.
BECKY QUICK: However — let’s play devil’s advocate here.
WARREN BUFFETT: Sure.
BECKY QUICK: You have three children who have foundations that each of them are running. Do you think that they’re a better allocator of that money than the federal government?
WARREN BUFFETT: I — I do. But I — I — I don’t think that setting it up so children, grandchildren — let’s say I died when they were 20. I don’t think they’d be the same individuals that they are. I didn’t — encourage that foundation program until they were in their 40’s and — and I’d seen what they’d done with their lives — and they — and they’d had a chance to live for a long time, going to public schools, living just like other people in Omaha live.
But I — I just think that — I don’t think we should have our Olympic team 20 years from now be the eldest sons of the Olympic team currently. And —
BECKY QUICK: So it’s the dynastic —
WARREN BUFFETT: The dynastic —
BECKY QUICK: —impact of money.
WARREN BUFFETT: I don’t think — I don’t think — a dynastic system with huge sums of wealth — and bear in mind the wealthy are so much wealthier now than they were 25 years ago. We’re talking about the 400 now having 2.4 trillion against 90 billion — 25 times as much money.
So you have — sprinkled around — you have these children and grandchildren that — that just with those 400 could have two — 2.4 trillion passed down to them.
That’s a lot of resources in this country with a $20 billion G — not even quite a 20 bill — trillion-dollar G — GDP.
I think — I think it goes totally against what’s built this country, what this country stands for.
And if those 5,000 people can’t stand to spend the 20 or 25 billion, they’ve got lots left over. Believe me.
And incidentally it would be bad for philanthropy. I mean — people would — a certain number of people would elect to set their kids up with — you know, billions and billions of dollars rather than — than have it go to philanthropy.
But I don’t think that’s the primary reason. But I do think that’d be a byproduct.
The bill Buffett and Becky were discussing did not pass, but the exemption has been increased over the years to its current level of $15 million per person.
Berkshire closes Abel’s first big deal as CEO
One day after Taylor Morrison shareholders approved the deal, Berkshire Hathaway has closed its $6.8 billion acquisition of the homebuilder.
In a news release, CEO Greg Abel is quoted as saying, “This best-in-class national homebuilder will lead our vision for a unified site-built homebuilding operation.”
In a departure from its previous practice of usually having subsidiaries operate individually, Berkshire will integrate Taylor Morrison’s brands into its Clayton Properties Group to “serve renters, entry-level, move-up, and resort lifestyle segments.”
When the deal was announced in late May, Warren Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick, “Greg did that faster than I could have done it, smoother than I could have done it, and I never talked to the CEO. He has launched.”
watch nowVIDEO03:33Berkshire Hathaway buys Taylor Morrison for $6.8 billionSquawk Box
Analysts, including Margaret Whelan, founder and CEO of Whelan Advisory, told us Berkshire’s move to buy Taylor Morrison suggested the housing market had bottomed and would be improving.
“I assume sophisticated buyers would wait and buy later or pay less if they thought the market was still going down.”
watch nowVIDEO04:47Taylor Morrison CEO says Berkshire Hathaway deal marks ‘a very exciting time’ for the companySquawk on the Street
BUFFETT & BERKSHIRE AROUND THE INTERNET
Some links may require a subscription:
- The Motley Fool: Berkshire Hathaway’s Cash Pile Now Earns More in a Year Than Most S&P 500 Companies Report in Total Profit. Here’s the Math.
BERKSHIRE STOCK WATCH
Four weeks
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Twelve months
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BRK.A stock price: $744,999.99
BRK.B stock price: $494.93
BRK.B P/E (TTM): 14.73
Berkshire market capitalization: $1,068,830,909,412
Berkshire Cash as of March 31: $397.4 billion (Up 6.5% from Dec. 31)
Excluding Rail Cash and Subtracting T-Bills Payable: $380.2 billion (Up 3.0% from Dec. 31)
Berkshire repurchased $234 million of its shares in Q1 2026.
BERKSHIRE’S TOP EQUITY HOLDINGS – Jul. 24, 2026
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Berkshire’s top holdings of disclosed publicly traded stocks in the U.S. and Japan, by market value, based on the latest closing prices.
Holdings are as of March 31, 2026, as reported in Berkshire Hathaway’s 13F filing on May 15, 2026, except for:
- Alphabet, which includes the $10 billion in shares that Berkshire agreed to buy directly from the company, as announced on June 1, 2026. Berkshire has not yet formally disclosed whether the transaction has been completed. The entry is a combination of Class A and Class C Alphabet shares. The market price is a weighted average of the prices of the two classes.
- Mitsubishi, which is as of April 30, 2026
The full list of holdings and current market values is available from CNBC.com’s Berkshire Hathaway Portfolio Tracker.
QUESTIONS OR COMMENTS
Please send any questions or comments about the newsletter to me at alex.crippen@nbcuni.com. (Sorry, but we don’t forward questions or comments to Buffett himself.)
If you aren’t already subscribed to this newsletter, you can sign up here.
Also, Buffett’s annual letters to shareholders are highly recommended reading. There are collected here on Berkshire’s website.
— Alex Crippen, Editor, Warren Buffett Watch
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