14-year-old Warren Buffett’s first tax return shows he was making bank even as a teen
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s road to becoming one of the world’s wealthiest people began with a newspaper route in northwest Washington, D.C.—a job he meticulously documented and paid taxes on in 1944.
Billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s road to becoming one of the world’s wealthiest people began with a newspaper route in northwest Washington, D.C.—a job he meticulously documented and paid taxes on in 1944.
The Berkshire Hathaway CEO, today worth more than $75 billion, provided his first federal income-tax return to the PBS NewsHour. The document offers insight into how the investing legend began amassing wealth even as a teenager.
According to the return, Buffett paid $7 in taxes on $592.50 of income in 1944. He also declared $228 in interest and dividend income.
Translated into 2017 dollars, that’s $8,221.18 in income and $3,163.59 in investments—not bad for 14 years of age.
On the second page of the document, clearly typed by hand, Buffett also tracked his expenses: $10 for repairing a watch, and $35 he filed under “Bicycle -Misc.”
As a multibillionaire, his returns would become more complex, as Buffett revealed last October. He made the information public in response to then Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump assertion that “Warren Buffett took a massive deduction” using a tax-loss carryforward. Buffett issued a press release to counter Trump’s claim. It also noted his initial 1944 tax payment:
My 2015 return shows adjusted gross income of $11,563,931…The total charitable contributions I made during the year were $2,858,057,970, of which more than $2.85 billion were not taken as deductions and never will be. Tax law properly limits charitable deductions…I have paid federal income tax every year since 1944… (Though, being a slow starter, I owed only $7 in tax that year.) I have copies of all 72 of my returns and none uses a carryforward.