ClaimsWarren Buffett

“And that rate was 35% not that long ago, and it’s been 52% in the past when I’ve been operating.”

Warren Buffett, Berkshire chairman and CEO 4 May 2024 Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting 2024 Transcript (Good-Investing)

Factual Economics and markets

The US federal corporate tax rate was 35% not long ago and has been 52% in the past during Buffett's career.

Unresolvable The public record could not settle it.

Factual: Statements about the present or the past, checked against the record: did they hold up?

What would count as true or false

There are two parts. (1) The top US federal statutory corporate income tax rate was 35% in the recent past, before the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cut it to 21%. (2) The top rate was 52% at some point during Buffett's investing career, which began around 1950. True: official historical rate tables confirm both. Mostly true: both are substantially right with a minor discrepancy, such as a 52% figure that actually included a surcharge or differed by under one percentage point. Mixed: only one part holds. Mostly false: both figures are off, but rates near them existed. False: neither figure matches the historical top rates.

Set before the research began.

Evidence (1)

  1. E1 15-Apr-14 Marginal Rates of the Federal Corporation Income ... Tax Policy Center · 15 April 2014

    “Sources: Joseph Pechman. Federal Tax Policy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987; Internal Revenue Service, Publication 542, 1993-2006;”

Reasoning

The only evidence is the source line of the Tax Policy Center's table of historical federal corporate income tax rates (E1). It names the table's sources (Pechman; IRS Publication 542) but gives no rates or years. Without those figures, the evidence cannot confirm either a 35% top rate before the 2017 cut or a 52% top rate during Buffett's career.

Cite this claim

Warren Buffett, “The US federal corporate tax rate was 35% not long ago and has been 52% in the past during Buffett's career.” (said 4 May 2024). Verdict: unresolvable. Reliability API, claim c_ad03e7c7289e, method 0.1.0+28da144b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_ad03e7c7289e

This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.

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  3. Mixed Factual 15 December 2020
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  4. Mostly true Factual 15 December 2020
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  5. Resolved true Factual 15 December 2020
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    The pandemic-induced recession has shut down many people's businesses while others are prospering.

All of them

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