it is the helmsley building in new york. you remember leona helmsley, famous for saying taxes are for the little people to pay. this building is big enough that it has its own zip code, which means it is big enough that you can conclude what taxes are paid out of the building because the irs quantifies taxes by zip code. the occupants were very successful and very well compensated, god bless them. they actually paid 14.7% of their federal taxes. the doorman, the janitor, the security guard all paid tax rates well up into the 20%. it is not just something strange about the ghost of leona helmsley. this is true if you look at the statistics the irs itself discloses for the 400 highest income earners in the country. they turned over a quarter of a billion dollars on average, each. they all paid tax rates that i would submit are lower than the tax rates that everyone of you paid in this room. they paid 18.2%. to get to 18.2% on our tax code as a single filer, you have to make $40,000. that is what a truck driver makes in rhode i

is dirty and he is provided for well if he is an owner would pass away we all think back to leona helmsley when there is a much better way to make contingency if he would die before your pet. you decided that if something happened to you that dirty is taking care of is that how it works? >> my wife and i decided upon that we would put his brother being goal and a birdie and we'll have all language that we were given by the as p ca and we told our executor birdie is to be placed in the program by a wonderful track work record of that spca he will be provided for. >> there are a couple options that people can make in order for their tax debts to be taking care of >> in 2009 california legislation passed out at trust the candied report of your overall last questions. wishes. that's our your property cell is part of your estate. the program was started 30 years ago parliament passed away and she made provisions that if she would die or dogwood bellwether and the spca fought and won the decades than this idyll program was started. leave it as a state plan with your estate and you can roll your

it was very interesting, many fights; a wonderful fight against harry helmsley who was going to threaten to bulldoze the tudor city parks in this development he owned. he put bulldozers next to them and scared all the residents half to death, and unless the city gave him a playground -- it wasn't any great shakes, but it was a public playground across from the u.n., which was nearby -- for him to put a building on. these kids kept coming to the community board -- i was chairing this hearing -- high school kids who ran a roller hockey league for younger children. one of the kids, john caulfield, had a terrible stutter. there were three minutes for speakers to speak at the public part of the hearing. he would get up and speak and he couldn't even get his name out basically in the three minutes, and it was torture. there he was in front of, in any given night, 150 or 200 members of the public plus the community board members, stuttering away trying to say why the playground was important and so moved me and everybody else that we decided that we would figure out, do whatever we could to sto

and this problem isn't just a fluke in the helmsley building. each year, the internal revenue service publishes a report that adds up all the taxes paid by the 400 highest income earning americans. i spoke earlier this year, several times actually, on last year's report, which included data from 2007, like the same year as the helmsley building. in that year, these super high-income earners, making on average a third of a billion dollars approximately -- a billion with a "b" -- they paid a lower tax rate in 2007, the 400 of them did on average, than an average hospital orderly who's a single payer pushing a cart down the halls of rhode island hospital at night. in may, the i.r.s. published updated data on the top 400 income earners for 2008. let's take a look at the status of the top 400 earners in that more recent year. well, they're down from a third of a billion dollars, on average, to over a quarter of a billion dollars each. and certainly we can applaud that kind of success in america. that's definitely the american dream come true. but, on

and this problem isn't just a fluke in the helmsley building. each year, the internal revenue service publishes a report that adds up all the taxes paid by the 400 highest income earning americans. i spoke earlier this year, several times actually, on last year's report, which included data from 2007, like the same year as the helmsley building. in that year, these super high-income earners, making on average a third of a billion dollars approximately -- a billion with a "b" -- they paid a lower tax rate in 2007, the 400 of them did on average, than an average hospital orderly who's a single payer pushing a cart down the halls of rhode island hospital at night. in may, the i.r.s. published updated data on the top 400 income earners for 2008. let's take a look at the status of the top 400 earners in that more recent year. well, they're down from a third of a billion dollars, on average, to over a quarter of a billion dollars each. and certainly we can applaud that kind of success in america. that's definitely the american dream come true. but, on