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Charitable Contributions

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Charitable Contributions
The first person to be discussed in this paper will be Steve Jobs. He has been referred to as greedy and an ogre by several. Mr. Jobs invested most of his money in real estate and then had it in trusts to reduce his taxable income from approximately 35% to 15% (Vince 2011). Little has been discovered about the personal charitable contributions made by Mr. Jobs. Apple, on the other hand made numerous contributions to schools and other civic groups. Apple (maybe in an effort to reduce criticism from others in his group that gives generously) has started to match employee charitable contributions to their various charities, up to a limit of $10,000.00 (Mogg, 2011).
The next individual to be discussed is Warren Buffet. Mr. Buffet states to have made over 62 billion dollars in 2010, with an AGI (adjusted gross income) of 39 billion dollars (Kent, 2011). Most of the variance is due to capital gains and losses which are the adjustments for AGI. The charitable contributions and local taxes are from AGI which is how his taxable rate of 17.4% was determined. This is a much lower rate than many of those employed by his company, and since his income is much higher than this group of employees he qualifies for a higher percentage of charitable contribution. At the AGI, Mr. Buffet states to have in 2010, he would qualify to contribute about 20 billion dollars just in cash donations. Mr. Buffet is obviously doing many things right, not only to benefit him and his family, but to the benefit of many others. There will be more on this and the ethical concerns related to his charitable donations later in this report. The majority of Americans fall in the 30% taxable rate (CBS Political News Hotsheet, 2011).
The next individual will be Bill Gates. Mr. Gates and his wife, Melinda supports the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, but that is to be excluded from

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