BY Reuven Blau
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU
Sunday, September 25th 2011, 1:27 PM
The white gloves are off.
Mayor Bloomberg Sunday slammed billionaire investor Warren Buffett's call for higher taxes on the super-rich, dismissing it as political theater.
"The Buffett thing is just theatrics," Hizzoner said speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press."
In August, Buffett - known as "The Oracle from Omaha" - said he forked over a little less than $7 million in taxes last year, which added up to roughly 17% of his income.
That percentage was lower than the secretaries in his office, he pointed out.
Bloomberg said Buffett's use of the figures was a bit of a smoke and mirrors game.
"If Warren Buffett made his money from ordinary income rather than capital gains his tax rate would be a lot higher than his secretaries. And in fact a very small percentage of people in this country pay a big chunk of the taxes," the billionaire mayor argued.
A following Associated Press review revealed that millionaires on average pay 29.1% of their income in taxes.
Bloomberg said a more comprehensive look at the numbers was needed.
"I think a lot of it is just theater. I think that it's more than a sound bite economic policy and we should look at what the real data is rather than just go and say one guy pays more than his secretary or doesn't."
In reiterating his call for everyone to pay added taxes, Bloomberg said it is difficult to define which tax brackets people fall into.
"You can't define what's the middle class, what is wealthy, what is poor," he said. "Every time you have a jump, people play games to get on one side or another, and I think it's not fair to say that wealthy people don't pair their fair share."
The mayor has advocated for a plan that would entail a two- or three-percent tax hike across the board.
"For the average person that's $150 bucks. For the wealthy it's a lot of money. But that's the only way you are going to get something through Congress."
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