In his annual letter to shareholders, Warren Buffett reflected on Berkshire Hathaway’s successes over the past year while offering the Trump administration some advice on responsible stewardship of the U.S. economy.
“Thank you, Uncle Sam. Someday your nieces and nephews at Berkshire hope to send you even larger payments than we did in 2024. Spend it wisely,” Buffett wrote in the Feb. 22 letter.
He highlighted Berkshire Hathaway’s tax contributions as a testament to its growth, contrasting its zero-income tax payments before his 1965 takeover with the record-breaking $26.8 billion it paid to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) last year. This sum, he noted, was more than any U.S. company—including trillion-dollar tech giants—had ever contributed to corporate income tax.
“To be precise, Berkshire last year made four payments to the IRS that totaled $26.8 billion,” Buffett wrote. “That’s about 5 percent of what all of corporate America paid. (In addition, we paid sizable amounts for income taxes to foreign governments and to 44 states.)”
Buffett attributed this staggering tax payment to Berkshire’s longstanding policy of reinvesting profits rather than issuing dividends. Since 1965, shareholders have received just one cash dividend—10 cents per share in 1967—allowing the company to compound its earnings and taxable income over six decades. As a result, Buffett said, Berkshire’s total tax payments to the U.S. Treasury now exceed $101 billion.
Buffett’s call to Uncle Sam to “spend wisely” comes at a time when the Trump administration is doubling down on spending cuts to rein in the United States’s growing public debt. As part of this effort, President Donald Trump has launched the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), tasking it with identifying waste, fraud, and abuse in federal spending.
Elon Musk, who leads DOGE, has warned that unless federal debt is reduced, interest payments alone will spiral out of control, threatening the future of Medicare and Social Security.
“We either solve the deficit, or all we’ll be doing is paying debt,” Musk told Fox News’s Sean Hannity in a recent interview. “It’s got to be solved, or there’s no medical care, there’s no Social Security, there’s no nothing. … America will go bankrupt if this is not done.”
The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently issued a stark warning that the federal government’s long-term fiscal trajectory is “unsustainable” and poses “serious” risks to economic stability, national security, and social cohesion.
Buffett’s message to the Trump administration wasn’t solely about fiscal discipline—it also carried a message of compassion for the less fortunate. “Take care of the many who, for no fault of their own, get the short straws in life. They deserve better,” Buffett wrote. “And never forget that we need you to maintain a stable currency and that result requires both wisdom and vigilance on your part.”
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