Berkshire Hathaway chairman and CEO Warren E Buffett, in a letter to shareholders, said that the company has paid more in corporate income tax than the US government had ever received from any company or even the American tech titans that commanded market values in the trillions. 

Warren Buffett highlighted that the company paid $26.8 billion in taxes to the US government in 2024. “…To be precise, Berkshire last year made four payments to the IRS that totaled $26.8 billion. That’s about 5% of what all of corporate America paid. (In addition, we paid sizable amounts for income taxes to foreign governments and to 44 states.),” he said. 

Warren Buffett went on to say that Berkshire paid way more than $1 million in tax every 20 minutes. “If Berkshire had sent the Treasury a $1 million check every 20 minutes throughout all of 2024 – visualize 366 days and nights because 2024 was a leap year – we still would have owed the federal government a significant sum at yearend. Indeed, it would be well into January before the Treasury would tell us that we could take a short breather, get some sleep, and prepare for our 2025 tax payments,” quipped Buffett.

He said that in 1965, the company did not pay a dime of income tax, calling it “an embarrassment that had generally prevailed at the company for a decade”. “That sort of economic behavior may be understandable for glamorous startups, but it’s a blinking yellow light when it happens at a venerable pillar of American industry. Berkshire was headed for the ash can. Fast forward 60 years and imagine the surprise at the Treasury when that same company – still operating under the name of Berkshire Hathaway – paid far more in corporate income tax than the U.S. government had ever received from any company…,” he said. 

“Cash income-tax payments to the U.S. Treasury, miniscule in the first decade, now aggregate more than $101 billion . . . and counting,” Berkshire Hathaway CEO added. 

Berkshire Hathaway, today, released its annual report wherein Warren Buffett, yet again, highlighted how companies are taxed in the US. Earlier last year as well, he had predicted an increase in taxes in the United States to tackle widening fiscal deficits. At the Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha last year, he had said, “I think higher taxes are likely.” “They may decide that some day they don’t want the fiscal deficit to be this large because that has some important consequences. So they may not want to decrease spending and they may decide they’ll take a larger percentage of what we own, and we’ll pay it,” he had added.