An interesting nuance in the tax debate is that the top 1% of income earners typically receive a greater portion of their taxable income from capital gains rather than ordinary income, so the recent proposed tax increase on ordinary income from 35% to 39.5% will not come into play.  Billionaires such as Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and several of the top hedge fund managers sounded very altruistic in not opposing the tax increase, but I award these billionaires the Colman Knight Hypocrisy Award for 2011 since the increase does not really affect them.  None of these people volunteered to pay more in taxes than necessary nor did Barack Obama, who could have donated the difference in his taxes to the US Treasury but instead chose to pay the lower tax that he opposed.  So much for leading by example!