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Warren Buffett donates record $5.3B Berkshire shares to charity
- tim333 2y agoIf Warren hadn't given his Berkshire shares away he'd still have 474,998 currently worth $290bn and be the world's richest man by quite a margin. He's done good with the investing. I think one of the reasons for giving it away is to avoid all the hype about that.
- next_xibalba 2y agoBetween this and his announcement about the family charitable trust [1], I wonder if he is sensing the end is near. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/28/investing/warren-buffett-gates-donation/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/28/investing/warren-buffett-gate...
- ITB 2y agoNo need for sensing. It’s on the actuarial tables.
- riffic 2y agono kidding, dude is 93 and outlived Jimmy Buffett. On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone blah blah blah.
- alexcos 2y agoHe will be 94 in August. He lost his friend and business partner, Charlie Munger, last year at 99. Maybe that was somewhat of a memento mori for him
- demondemidi 2y agoTo think when his kids inherit all the stocks he owns, the purchase price is reset to the market price at inheritance. Which means 10s of billions of tax free stock sales.
- pininja 2y agoHow does that work?
- hsnewman 2y agoWhen you gain ownership of stock the price at that time is called the basis price. If you inherit stock, when you receive the stock the stock price at that time is the basis.
- chx 2y agoJust like that. Say you invested $22 and bought one Apple stock at IPO. Thanks to splits you now hold 224 stocks each worth some $210. Let's presume you die. Your heir inherits 224 stocks at $210 and so if they sell them at $210 then no taxes are paid. This is how the rich avoid paying taxes: the money they spend mostly comes from bank loans secured by their stocks which are only paid back by their heirs using this scheme.
- blackhawkC17 2y ago> This is how the rich avoid paying taxes: the money they spend mostly comes from bank loans secured by their stocks which are only paid back by their heirs using this scheme. Only a small percentage of wealthy people do this because 1) It is risky. If the stock falls too much, they get margin called and lose all their pledged shares. Natural gas billionaire Charif Souki learned this the hard way [1] 2) Many of them have privately held companies, so there's no stock to borrow against. 3) It's easier just to take dividends or salaries and use that for everyday expenses. 4) Any pledged shares must be disclosed in public SEC filings, and most public company executives don't file such disclosures (they prefer to sell shares outright). For some reason, any finance-related thread on HN always brings out the faux accountants and tax lawyers. 1- https://seekingalpha.com/news/3549059-tellurians-souki-forced-to-sell-85-percent-of-trust-stake-lender https://seekingalpha.com/news/3549059-tellurians-souki-force...
- ralusek 2y ago“stepped up basis”
- divbzero 2y agoBuffett has been donating regularly since 2006. The record amount donated probably reflects Berkshire Hathaway’s record high stock price which surpassed $600,000 per share this year.
- jasonvorhe 2y ago[flagged]
- rvnx 2y agoThere is no better charity than charity to yourself
- chx 2y agoSince this is led by the Gates Foundation, I would recommend https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#gates-foundation https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/13/public-interest-pharma/#g... on them.
- bitwize 2y agoKinda reminds me of Larry Ellison's charitable contributions to the Foundation to Extend Larry Ellison's Lifespan.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 29athrowaway 2y ago[flagged]
- cityzen 2y agoMore of a “friends and family” round if you will. Fuck all those other charities, only rich people and their kids know how to use that money. Buffett donated 9.93 million shares to the Gates Foundation, and has donated more than $43 billion of Berkshire shares there overall. He also donated 993,035 shares to the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named for his late first wife, and 695,122 shares to each of three charities led by his children Howard, Susan and Peter: the Howard G. Buffett Foundation, the Sherwood Foundation and the NoVo Foundation.
- hipadev23 2y agoThe foundations you mentioned exist to redistribute that money to other foundations and initiatives. They’re better vehicles to make grants instead of Warren/Berkshire trying to be experts on charitable donations. This is literally all public record, you can see every single grant made by each foundation.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- JoshTko 2y agoi.e. Buffet donates money to entities that are 100% controlled by friends and family. For example: The ~$400M donation to Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation give out about 200 scholarships per year at a max of $10k per scholarship ($2M/yr total). At a 10% rate of return (BRK actually does way higher) the foundation earns $40M/yr. So only a tiny fraction of gains are given out. Since the scholarships are $10K max per scholarship the average payout per year is probably way lower than $2M/yr. So really, what is the purpose of this foundation?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- cen4 2y agoLoss Aversion is a feature of the chimp brain but it turns into a bug after the chimp accumulates too many bananas.
- blackhawkC17 2y agoThe Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation already spends $500 million annually and has doled out over $6 billion in total donations [1]. A simple Google search would have prevented writing easily falsifiable info.. 1- https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/476032365 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/476...
- JoshTko 2y agoReally interesting, where is the money going, is surely not $500M/yr in nebraska college scholarships which is the sole thing mentioned on their website.
- hipadev23 2y agoI know information literacy isn’t practiced among conspiracy theorists but it’s literally listed out in detail every single year. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/476032365/202341329349101219/full https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/476...
- rKarpinski 2y agoHis heirs will wield a tremendous amount of amount of influence on society from controlling these foundations. Is it really that much different than just giving it to them outright aside from limiting conspicuous consumption?