What is it with high tax preaching rich people? They love to preach how others should pay higher taxes yet they themselves do everything they can to avoid it - such as Warren Buffett's taking advantage of every loophole in the book to avoid paying more taxes than he is required to or Hollywood's moving their business outside of California and sometimes the US to avoid paying high state and federal taxes.
Jim Sinegal is the CEO of Costco and was a big campaigner for Obama and his calls for higher taxes on the rich. Yet the WSJ exposes him and his company for paying an advanced dividend to their clients in order to avoid paying more taxes when the Bush tax cuts expire next year.
One of the biggest dividend winners will be none other than Mr.
Sinegal, who owns about two million shares, while his wife owns another
84,669. At $7 a share, the former CEO will take home roughly $14
million. At a 15% tax rate he'll get to keep nearly $12 million of that
windfall, while at next year's rate of 43.4% he'd take home only about
$8 million. That's a lot of extra cannoli.
This isn't exactly the
tone of, er, shared sacrifice that Mr. Sinegal struck on stage in
Charlotte. He described Mr. Obama as "a President making an economy
built to last," adding that "for companies like Costco to invest, grow,
hire and flourish, the conditions have to be right. That requires
something from all of us." But apparently $4 million less from Mr.
Sinegal.
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