I agree with you that your example would be hypocritical. I also agree with you that one would be "behaving stupidly" to pay more money to the government than required as you seem to be acknowledging (as Warren Buffet apparently has) that contributions to the government are not the most efficient means of charitable action. Basically, the government is not good at spending money so it would be logical for Warren to think that he can spend his own money on a charitable cause better than the government. And to his credit, he plans on giving away almost everything to charities that he chooses. I respect him for that. However, based on his past actions and public information, he seems to minimize his contributions to the government as much as possible. Therefore, I stand by my previous claim that he's acting hypocritical in calling for wealthy people to give more of their money to the government while he avoids doing the same. He should instead simply focus on calling for wealthy people to give more to charity as he does. I suspect (but cannot prove) that the only reason he brought up the tax issue was in exchange for some political favor.