With all the MSM banter about taxes today in the headlines, here’s a report that was conveniently dismissed by the same pearl-clutching media. In April 2015 Reuters reported on Hillary Clinton’s family charities falsifying tax filings to the IRS and not reporting donations from foreign governments...
(Reuters) Hillary Clinton’s family’s charities are refiling at least five annual tax returns after a Reuters review found errors in how they reported donations from governments, and said they may audit other Clinton Foundation returns in case of other errors.
[…] The charities’ errors generally take the form of under-reporting or over-reporting, by millions of dollars, donations from foreign governments, or in other instances omitting to break out government donations entirely when reporting revenue, the charities confirmed to Reuters.
The errors, which have not been previously reported, appear on the form 990s that all non-profit organizations must file annually with the Internal Revenue Service to maintain their tax-exempt status. A charity must show copies of the forms to anyone who wants to see them to understand how the charity raises and spends money.
[…] For three years in a row beginning in 2010, the Clinton Foundation reported to the IRS that it received zero in funds from foreign and U.S. governments, a dramatic fall-off from the tens of millions of dollars in foreign government contributions reported in preceding years.
Those entries were errors, according to the foundation: several foreign governments continued to give tens of millions of dollars toward the foundation’s work on climate change and economic development through this three-year period. Those governments were identified on the foundation’s annually updated donor list, along with broad indications of how much each had cumulatively given since they began donating. (read more)
Hillary Clinton making an issue out of Donald Trump filing a $916 million loss twenty years ago. I wonder if she’ll express the same concerns about Warren Buffet losing $2.6 billion this year on one investment?
Nah, probably not.
Warren Buffett’s big bet on Big Blue is looking like a bigger booboo for the investing legend. He’s now lost $2.6 billion on his investment in tech giant IBM IBM 0.47% . That was an increase of nearly $600 million in the last three months of 2015 alone, and it was only one of a number of positions that lost money in Berkshire’s portfolio in 2016.
In his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders this year, Warren Buffett acknowledged, as he has done in the past, that he has made “a few” investing mistakes over the years, particularly when it comes to buying whole companies. “I will commit more errors; you can count on that,” Buffett writes. “If we luck out, they will occur at our smaller operations.” (link)