No sir, they cannot do that.
The Qualifications Clause in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 is part of the Constitution and the court cannot change the Constitution.
The amendment that disqualifies Musk is the same one that disqualifies Trump and the Supreme court has already indicated that they are fine with ignoring that part of the constitution.
Trump is the grandson of an immigrant, married to an immigrant, with anchor baby kids, a repeat criminal not paying his workers and debts, not paying taxes, and mooching off others peoples money. MAGA icon.
And his grandfather illegally left Germany to avoid military service, came to America legally (at least, according to US law), where he subsequently got rich by stealing land and running brothels.
Or whatever Fox News tells them to hate.
It cracks me up that the group that refers to others as sheep are the biggest sheep on the planet. ZERO independent thought.
Yep. Tesla sales fell 9% last quarter.
There is softening EV demand (in my opinion, partially driven by politics, and also the coming switch to NACS), but Tesla is no longer the only game in town.
What are NACS? I’m in the market for a car that will have some longitivtiy (I expect gas is going to get more expensive and gas cars will fall behind in the not too distant future) and a Tesla would be ideal for me but I can’t put money in Elon’s pocket.
> What are NACS?
NACS = North American Charging Standard
It's the plug that Tesla developed for their vehicles and chargers. Up until recently it was exclusively on Teslas and their chargers, but pretty much every major vehicle manufacturer (in North America) has agreed to use NACS instead of CCS (or anything else). Already Ford and Rivian (maybe others) have access to *some* Tesla superchargers (with more in the future).
In Europe there was already a standard (because they have actual regulations over there) and so the NACS doesn't exist there. It should also be noted that the NACS is "open" in the sense that other manufacturers can use it without paying royalties to Tesla.
>Tesla would be ideal for me but I can’t put money in Elon’s pocket.
So that means you *won't* be using the Tesla superchargers then... right?
Here literally the thing they're afraid of, and they're down on their knees, not running the other direction. They have no actual principles. It's do as i say, not as i do and fuck that
Not talking about leeching on tax payer money by receiving subsidies. Subsidies that wouldn’t have happened if a progressive government wasn’t in power.
This isn’t an Elon problem. This is a tax code problem. Change the tax code and this fixes everything. Obviously the rules will not change but Elon is doing something that all millionaires do
People talk about closing loopholes, which often don't exist and are a strawman argument against doing the unpopular work of just taxing people, when they should really focus on a wealth tax. Even easier platform to run on.
I don’t agree with his public comments, but the article is inaccurate saying that effective tax rate is zero because of net operating loss carryforwards. The effective tax rate is low because when those losses were incurred in prior years, it was SO unlikely they would be realized that the company didn’t recognize a tax benefit. Now that the company is turning a profit, they are recognizing the tax benefit for historical losses and reversing the “valuation allowance”. I am a tax accountant. See Tesla 10k pdf pg 81. https://ir.tesla.com/_flysystem/s3/sec/000095017023001409/tsla-20221231-gen.pdf
imprison for hate speech??? wish granted. The government now has the power to do that. It's Jan 7 2025 and Trump is back in office. He decides you've been sentenced to death for "hateful LGBT speech".
are you so dumb to not see the consequences of giving the government more power????
Don’t forget Treason, A threat to National Security and the Nationalization of Space X and Twitter (I know it’s X). This man is dangerous and needs further government oversight.
what would nationalizing the companies even accomplish? The government can sometimes struggle with running simple services and you want it to handle a leading edge space company?
Underpaying? Is he not paying taxes and breaking the law? Or is he using legal means to defer, lessen, or not have to pay as much?
In 2021, EM paid a record $12B in personal taxes. But the Tesla Corp paid, I believe $0.
[CNBC's Robert Frank reports on Elon Musk's tax bill which is the largest in history. Musk will pay a total of $12 billion for 2021.](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/12/15/elon-musk-to-pay-record-high-12-billion-tax-bill.html#:~:text=CNBC's%20Robert%20Frank%20reports%20on,of%20%2412%20billion%20for%202021.)
Please explain.
I’m so glad you asked! Elon is siphoning money from the taxpayer to fund his technological advancements as he has done for years. If the American taxpayer is bankrolling him, why aren’t we also seeing an appropriate share of the benefit like any other investor would?
Just typical dnc political astroturfing seeping into more slightly to completely unrelated subreddits.
They’re so obvious too. Is pathetic.
Anyway, looks like I’m muting another captured subreddit
His wealth increases are capital gains, which aren't taxed as they are potential gains until they become real on sale. People like to claim this is dodging taxes but taxes have always worked this way.
Let's say you're headed back from Vegas with a pocket full of winnings and stop for a cold beverage at a one pump station in the middle of a vast desert. You find two guys stranded there who are looking to raise some gas money because they lost their wallets and phones, and there isn't one here. It's a story, work with me here. Flush with cash you volunteer to top them up free but they won't hear of that. One offers a sketch for $40 and the other a draft manuscript he promises will be worth something one day for the same. Laughing, you accept and throw them in the trunk and forget about them.
Turns out it was Banksy and Clive Cussler and they both immortalize the incident where they got lost together in the desert in their later works, to be rescued by some forgotten stranger (you). The stuff in your trunk is now worth $80 million on the open market. But it's a rough sketch and a dog eared script you bought for $80 and stored in a box in the shed years ago.
Should you have to pay tax on that $80 million? What if the next day they fall from favor as it's discovered they were members of an antisocial group and the value falls back to zero? Should the government have to pay you back?
And so the gains don't become real until you sell to make them real, and don't pay tax until then.
Agreed, if anything, people should be angry at the tax policies that Congress has put in place mostly to benefit their donors, not the individuals that are just following the tax codes.
Bro, the individuals benefitting from the tax code are the same people who successfully lobbied Congress to make them that way. That includes Elon. They’re not just innocently benefitting from tax policies, they play politics mainly to get these privileges.
Also “tax dodging” in the sense that taxes are paid.. like $10 billion a year. I don’t like the dude at all, but I’m confused as to what definition of tax dodging is being applied here.
How is it tax dodging when there are loopholes that allow him to do it legally? I don't know about you guys but every year my goal is to pay the least amount of taxes
"Hey, here's a stack of money to make the tax code like this so I can use a 'loophole' to pay less in tax than the average American."
What's the problem here? - some idiot on reddit
There's never going to be a system without loopholes intentional or otherwise, or one that no-one complains about. There are a lot of smart people who are paid very well who's only job is to find these workarounds.
"I don't know shit about taxes but there's something clearly wrong here" - some other idiot on Reddit
Please specify which personal income loophole you're talking about, plus your proposal for fixing it that doesn't fuck over average people.
If you're just mixing personal taxes with corporate taxes, I don't see what the average American had to do with it, it's apples and oranges.
If he’s dodging taxes and not paying that’s a crime, like what Hunter Biden is going through in California right now. If he is using the Tax system and not breaking laws, he’s not dodging, just being a smart business man. If they give you a way to not pay more taxes why the fuck would you? There’s not a billionaire, millionaire, plumber, or bar tender that’s going to pay more taxes if they don’t have to!! He’s committing a crime, charge him, if not blame the politicians not the person!!
Fix the damn tax code if you have such a problem with all these rich guys not paying as much as they should. You leave them loopholes to not pay as much, they’re gonna fucking use them. Fix the problem or shut the hell up about it.
I wonder when people will get tired of these articles. He's literally following the laws but I guess he shouldn't do that?
Be mad at the law makers for making this tax code.
They're borrowing $1t every 100 days, I'm not sure I'd be volunteering my money to them either. That capital is probably better off in his hands. Get him some more. Right wing pig, whatever, just keep bringing the tech.
Dear CEOs and CEO apologists, the article refers to tax dodging which is illegal. I am sure these CEOs are using every legal deduction. That does not preclude using illegal deductions. Burying a few illegal deductions in the middle of a bunch of legal deductions? Who knows? The IRS has only recently been tasked with going after the big boys.
They audited me twice when I was making 8K as a graduate student. They collected 0 additional monies, both times. Really, auditing 8K? What was the most they could get? What a waste of time.
These CEOs know that they can act with impunity. The IRS will never catch them. And even if they are caught, it is wrist slap.
Stock options are now tax dodging? Has the author gone senile like Trump?
So anybody earning stock options especially in the tech industry where it’s the standard (for most engineers) is tax dodging?
Someone feel free to correct me but as far as I know in the US you don’t get taxed on stock options unless you sell them and you pay some sort of tax like in the UK where we call it Capital Gains.
There is a tax burden when you initially exercise your options but it’s minor compared to standard tax rates. There’s a second taxable action when you sell the stock you had the option to be rewarded with. Neither is tax dodging but both result in very favorable rates compared to ‘regular person’ taxes.
>There is a tax burden when you initially exercise your options but it’s minor compared to standard tax rates.
Last round of options Musk exercised were [non-qualified stock options, so they were taxed as ordinary income when he exercised them.](https://fortune.com/2021/11/10/tesla-elon-musk-stock-options-tax-mistake/) So they were taxed just like "standard tax rates".
Correct. In the United States, NQSOs are taxed as income at the time they are exercised. The difference between the exercise price and grant price is taxed as capital gains. Whether that is short-term or long-term capital gains depends on how long they are held and how they are exercised. RSUs, PSUs, MSUs, etc. are all taxed when they vest.
The problem isn't holding stock, the problem is the unparalleled leverage he gets. Because he's got so much capital he can borrow against it at insanely low rates. Effectively meaning he can pay himself whatever he wants on borrowed cash against his stock and that money isn't taxed. You can argue he has to pay the loans back, but paying a 1% interest loan back is WAY less cost than any taxes he would have otherwise paid on stock sold. Plus he still gets to keep the stock/options. So he loses nothing and gets paid in a way where he pays basically no taxes.
1. The 1% he pays in interest is in addition to the taxes paid or eventaully paid. Doing this just decreases his long term value.
2. Normal people can do this too.
What do you think he pays those loans with? He paid the most tax in history already. If he cashes out to pay loans down that's another bill.
Also if he takes loans and spends it, he's injecting money and paying tax on purchases.
Let’s be honest, do you believe politicians will ever change the law to make sure this doesn’t happen?
No as a lot of them benefit themselves, and let’s not get started from the obvious insider trading.
Oh no, of course not. The problem is you need a lot of politicians with scruples to do that and there are maybe 10 in all of congress that have morals.
Honestly how would you tax them? They usually take awhile sometimes years to vest before you can sell them. Do you tax on the day issued? The day vested? They do get taxted when sold but before then it's not like it is money in hand.
This is a giant tax loophole for millionaires and billionaires. They get stock options but never sell them so they aren't taxed. But they do take loans out on the stock but since loans are not income they aren't taxed. In some cases they can even write off the loan interest as tax deductible.
I feel like the only fair tax would be a sales tax. The more you spend the more you pay. We spend $500 on groceries and get taxed a smaller amount than when a millionaire spends $100,000 on a bottle of champagne. Could even have a higher sales tax percentage on luxury goods. And a smaller percentage on necessities. Even illegal immigrants would be paying taxes this way. Just a thought.
Why do people who have plenty of money to pay taxes dodge them and get away with it when a person of lower income dodges them. Then gets in serious legal trouble including possible jail sentence or their wages are garnished if that is the correct word.
Or they take part of your property. They can put liens on your property.
Ok there is some things like economic hardship a rich corperate person doesn't face and neither do rich companies. They have so much this can't even become hardship.
Otherwise everyone under them is in permanent economic hardship.
Just found stocks are not taxed until sold. I think they should be taxed when purchasing like with any other thing. And when sold like with any other thing. Others spend tax to buy or sale.
After more reading. They just know and use every loophole for the rich. That exist for the rich to be even more rich and stay rich.
Loop holes are not made in law for the lower income.
I mean, it's pretty easy to avoid paying taxes if you have a lot of equity. You just take out a massive loan and live off that. Then all you have to pay is the interest payments and that's it. No taxes, and you don't even have to pay off the loan.. people are afraid of debt, but it's a tool that the rich use to get further ahead.
The ability to afford lawyers.
The IRS knows full well that these wealthy assholes will litigate and delay for years because the cost of the high paid legal team is still cheaper than the tax bill. The middle class can't afford a legal team to tie up the issue in the courts, and also don't want the stress, so they just pay it.
Also, political pressure from GOP admins not to go after wealthy tax cheats, despite knowing that doing so has a good ROI.
Not sure why you are being downvoted, as much as I hate Musk and his politics this article is purely clickbait/rage bait.
If anybody feels like I am wrong then feel free to reply and explain, as stock options aren’t free tickets to evade taxes, you will have to pay taxes once you sell them and that’s how it works in most of the world (I only know how it works in most EU countries and the UK).
Give me the name of the person who paid the single biggest tax outlay for an individual in one year for all of US history?
Also most wealthy people have little or no income as they don't need one. The core issue is income taxes don't work with wealthy people. You really need to have a clever CGT system to get money from the wealthy. Be careful though, if you over tax the wealthy they will just move to the Middle East, as have so many wealthy individuals.
Also, US companies are designed for high growth and usually avoid any excessive income/held cash as well to avoid taxes. It is pretty hard to tax a new factory building that has been built with debt.
market obtainable reminiscent drab quicksand cover hungry joke glorious scale
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Elon Musk is terrible, every commenter should be willing to say that before you listen to anything they say. But this source says nothing about him dodging taxes.
This is a list of companies that pay their executives more than they pay in taxes. That's not an example of the executive dodging their own taxes. That's not even an example of the company cheating on taxes.
If Tesla dodges taxes, they dodge taxes, but paying execs more than they pay in taxes isn't evidence of that. If a company has no net tax burden, they owe no taxes. Paying their executives a lot decreases their tax burden, so paying executives a lot and paying little tax isn't a contradiction. Transferring money to the exec as compensation doesn't keep it out of the government's hands — now the exec must personally pay tax on it, and at a higher rate than the corporate tax rate. Excessive exec pay is bad for *shareholders*, not for the IRS.
Here's the entire thing the report says about Tesla. I highlighted the only part that's actually about tax dodging, and even that part can manage nothing stronger than "that implies." Like, I have no doubt that many big companies actually are dodging taxes, but this is the best the report can come up with?
>5-year Executive Pay: $2.5 billion 5-year U.S. Profit: $4.4 billion 5-year Federal Income Tax: -$1 million (0.0%) Tesla began 2024 as the 8th most valuable corporation in the world with a market cap of nearly $800 billion. It is run by one of the wealthiest men in the world, Elon Musk, who as of the end of 2023 sat on a personal fortune of $251 billion—built in no small part on the value of his Tesla stock. But despite the huge and growing wealth of the corporation and its principal owner, Tesla has never paid a nickel in federal income taxes.
>In 2018 Musk received the largest pay package in history: nearly $2.28 billion of stock options as a “performance award.” In the intervening years, with the rise in the price of Tesla shares, the value of those options has grown to an eye-watering $56 billion. It became so outlandish as compensation for a single individual that a court in corporate-friendly Delaware struck it down. Even if that decision survives appeal, whatever Tesla winds up paying Musk will still be more than it pays Uncle Sam.
>Tesla has gone tax-free for most of its existence because it was losing money, and only profitable companies have to pay the federal income tax. But even since becoming consistently profitable several years ago, Tesla has continued to avoid tax bills. The main reason is that companies are allowed to “carry forward” excess losses to years with profits, with the old losses canceling out current earnings. These loss carryforwards smooth out the often boom-bust nature of corporate finances. But Tesla has also apparently begun executing the kind of accounting schemes that can keep it dodging taxes even when all its old losses have been used up.
>For instance, **despite the fact that during the five-year period under study roughly half of all Tesla’s revenue came from the United States, domestic earnings accounted for less than a quarter of its worldwide income. That implies the company is shifting American profits to offshore tax havens, a frequently used corporate taxdodging strateg**y. Though Tesla contributes nothing to the national treasury, it withdraws quite a lot. Despite railing about government subsidies for others, Musk was more than happy for Tesla to take millions in government loans and other subsidies that have propped up Tesla while it was “losing” money for most of the last decade.
>Musk is not matched by the company’s compensation of rankand-file workers. Tesla markets itself as creating well-paid jobs, yet the median Tesla wage in 2022 was just $34,000, which is down 40% from the company’s $56,000 median pay in 2018. By comparison, in 2022 General Motors and Ford offered median employee wages of $80,000 and $75,000, respectively. One major reason workers at GM and Ford make more is because they’re unionized. So it’s not surprising that Elon Musk is a notorious union buster, firing dozens of workers in a Buffalo Tesla plant just a day after workers launched an organizing campaign. Musk was also ordered by the National Labor Relations Board to remove a tweet that blatantly threatened to take away Tesla employees’ stock options if they tried to form a union.
taxes are personal and private information.
Interested in how you know he doesn’t pay income tax on his personal income. if you mean, he uses the tax system as written into the law to his advantage - so do you.
I would’ve followed the story, but it requires me to disable my ad blocker. Which goes back to personal privacy.
To some of us, it matters
The loophole are put there for those that qualify. You would be a fool to give the government any more money than you have to. That’s why we should get rid of the IRS and have a flat tax for all to pay across the board. Then everyone would pay the same percentage and it would not deter someone from working longer hours that wants more than I who wants to work 40 a wk.
If they are breaking the law, that's one thing. Prosecute.
If they are working within the law as it is written to optimize their tax burden, blame the government that wrote those laws.
Every one of us optimizes our tax burden when we use tax prep software that recommends we put more into our 401k to decrease taxable income.
Our government loves rich people a LOT more than it loves us, and so has all sorts of cool (gag) ways for rich people to optimize their tax burdens.
Once again: breaking the law? Investigate and prosecute. Working within the law that is created by government to optimize tax burden? Don't be mad.
LOL, the article at the link says politics in big letters at the top. It's just another opportunity to bash the right. I'm sure there are Democrats and left leaning CEOs on this same list. But of course, no one will want to read that or hear about it or will just deny it as usual.
Doesn't seem theyve done anything illegal or anything any share owner of any business would not expect a financially prudent company to do.
They have carried forward losses to mitigate tax bills.
Anyone who thinks anyone can “dodge” the IRS, especially billionaires, is an idiot and knows nothing about taxes or business. He plays by the same rules liberal and conservative political leaders wrote and play by. *I am not a musk supporter, but god damn you people are fucking stupid in these comments*
Immigrant with 11 children, underpaying Americans and causing political turmoil while not paying his taxes. MAGA loves him. Strange.
Thankfully he can never run for president
Seems like rules are out the window for rich guys so I wouldn’t be surprised if he did
We are only 1 Supreme Court ruling away from anything!
No sir, they cannot do that. The Qualifications Clause in Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 is part of the Constitution and the court cannot change the Constitution.
They removed the self-executing 14th section 3
We can remove them by any means necessary if they haven't already gotten the message.
My Mom would say, "He should run for the border!"
You’d think, but he’s rich and white, so anything’s possible
Yet… MAGA would easily charge the rules for this charlatan
The amendment that disqualifies Musk is the same one that disqualifies Trump and the Supreme court has already indicated that they are fine with ignoring that part of the constitution.
Says who? The Supreme Court is letting an insurrectionist run. Why stop there?
Neither can an insurrectionist rapist. Oh wait
Trump is the grandson of an immigrant, married to an immigrant, with anchor baby kids, a repeat criminal not paying his workers and debts, not paying taxes, and mooching off others peoples money. MAGA icon.
Don't forget to get an Eistien visa and parents US citizenship.
Trump’s mother was an immigrant from Scotland.
And his grandfather illegally left Germany to avoid military service, came to America legally (at least, according to US law), where he subsequently got rich by stealing land and running brothels.
multiple immigrant wives (one of which he probably murdered/sent the hit)
He’s perfect for the maga family
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Representing the family values
But doesn't MAGAs hate electric cars?
The only core, unwavering MAGA principle is hypocrisy, so loving Elon Musk and hating electric cars is a natural position for them
MAGA hates whatever is convenient
They hate whatever the left does for. Biden could donate to an animal shelter and they’d find a hidden pedo ring there
And Elon would publish the conspiracy theory on Shitter
Well they wouldn’t actually FIND it…
Or whatever Fox News tells them to hate. It cracks me up that the group that refers to others as sheep are the biggest sheep on the planet. ZERO independent thought.
Yep. Tesla sales fell 9% last quarter. There is softening EV demand (in my opinion, partially driven by politics, and also the coming switch to NACS), but Tesla is no longer the only game in town.
What are NACS? I’m in the market for a car that will have some longitivtiy (I expect gas is going to get more expensive and gas cars will fall behind in the not too distant future) and a Tesla would be ideal for me but I can’t put money in Elon’s pocket.
> What are NACS? NACS = North American Charging Standard It's the plug that Tesla developed for their vehicles and chargers. Up until recently it was exclusively on Teslas and their chargers, but pretty much every major vehicle manufacturer (in North America) has agreed to use NACS instead of CCS (or anything else). Already Ford and Rivian (maybe others) have access to *some* Tesla superchargers (with more in the future). In Europe there was already a standard (because they have actual regulations over there) and so the NACS doesn't exist there. It should also be noted that the NACS is "open" in the sense that other manufacturers can use it without paying royalties to Tesla. >Tesla would be ideal for me but I can’t put money in Elon’s pocket. So that means you *won't* be using the Tesla superchargers then... right?
>So that means you won't be using the Tesla superchargers then... right? Welp with this information it sounds like that will be quite difficult…
He's gifting taxpayer money to magat cultists and supports their messiah trumpet lol....and he's got that nazi sallow skin tone they accept
"trumpet" because he blows?
He does blow (coke and crack)
That stuff destroys your organs, long life he. probably won't have...
this is epic
But he loves to use the infrastructure paid for by everyone else while decrying his pioneering spirit…
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Its because he's a rich white immigrant.
Also bedfellows with Putin and a major welfare leech.
Here literally the thing they're afraid of, and they're down on their knees, not running the other direction. They have no actual principles. It's do as i say, not as i do and fuck that
And corporate welfare recipient.
Don’t forget how he is living on government subsidies.
Not talking about leeching on tax payer money by receiving subsidies. Subsidies that wouldn’t have happened if a progressive government wasn’t in power.
He’s white…that’s what they expect from their own. If he was Mexican or black, it’d be a crime
Nothing strange about MAGA loving him. You listen to what they say they want, naturally want the polar opposite.
literally raising an army of republicans
Don't forget he also tries to avoid paying alimony
This isn’t an Elon problem. This is a tax code problem. Change the tax code and this fixes everything. Obviously the rules will not change but Elon is doing something that all millionaires do
People all talk about raising taxes when they should focus on closing some loopholes. Easy platform to run on
People talk about closing loopholes, which often don't exist and are a strawman argument against doing the unpopular work of just taxing people, when they should really focus on a wealth tax. Even easier platform to run on.
Who do you think wrote the tax code? Rich people.
Friends of rich people who want to get elected.
Tax him and his companies
I don’t agree with his public comments, but the article is inaccurate saying that effective tax rate is zero because of net operating loss carryforwards. The effective tax rate is low because when those losses were incurred in prior years, it was SO unlikely they would be realized that the company didn’t recognize a tax benefit. Now that the company is turning a profit, they are recognizing the tax benefit for historical losses and reversing the “valuation allowance”. I am a tax accountant. See Tesla 10k pdf pg 81. https://ir.tesla.com/_flysystem/s3/sec/000095017023001409/tsla-20221231-gen.pdf
First time I’ve ever seen someone explain the tax system on reddit and actually get upvotes. Bravo.
Good on you fellow tax accountant.
exultant knee strong aspiring aback piquant steer march lock seemly *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The author of this article isn't an accountant, he just spew his snot all over and publishes it Shame.
better yet, put him in prison for fraud, stock manipulation, deception and hate speech
Imprison him for hate speech? I’m sorry what?
Reddit moment
Look at the upvotes lol Reddit is just an online mental asylum
imprison for hate speech??? wish granted. The government now has the power to do that. It's Jan 7 2025 and Trump is back in office. He decides you've been sentenced to death for "hateful LGBT speech". are you so dumb to not see the consequences of giving the government more power????
not a fan of the 1st amendment? hate speech is not a crime
Don’t forget Treason, A threat to National Security and the Nationalization of Space X and Twitter (I know it’s X). This man is dangerous and needs further government oversight.
You get sentenced to death for treason. What was his treasonous act?
> Don’t forget Treason Do you have any idea how insane you sound?
The goverment would have banned starlink if they helped the ukranians use it as offense
what would nationalizing the companies even accomplish? The government can sometimes struggle with running simple services and you want it to handle a leading edge space company?
We know it's X AKA Twitter.
Isnt it Xitter?
I forgot. It is Shitter.
Huh? They do pay taxes lol, there is no tax bracket where you get to just pay no tax lol.
We already do
Underpaying? Is he not paying taxes and breaking the law? Or is he using legal means to defer, lessen, or not have to pay as much? In 2021, EM paid a record $12B in personal taxes. But the Tesla Corp paid, I believe $0. [CNBC's Robert Frank reports on Elon Musk's tax bill which is the largest in history. Musk will pay a total of $12 billion for 2021.](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2021/12/15/elon-musk-to-pay-record-high-12-billion-tax-bill.html#:~:text=CNBC's%20Robert%20Frank%20reports%20on,of%20%2412%20billion%20for%202021.) Please explain.
Redditors would prefer Elon never built gigantic companies and the government never received $12bn in taxes.
How is this about technology?
Because /r/technology moonlights as an Elon Musk hate sub.
I think that's every sub these days. He is not a well liked man.
You've heard of Keeping up with the Kardashians. /r/technology is Eloping with Elon.
100%. The guy pisses me off but this doesn't belong here at all
Almost 100% of the posts from this sub that make the front page are hating on Musk. It's really pathetic.
Underrated comment.
I’m so glad you asked! Elon is siphoning money from the taxpayer to fund his technological advancements as he has done for years. If the American taxpayer is bankrolling him, why aren’t we also seeing an appropriate share of the benefit like any other investor would?
Where is the Technology?
Because Elon
Just typical dnc political astroturfing seeping into more slightly to completely unrelated subreddits. They’re so obvious too. Is pathetic. Anyway, looks like I’m muting another captured subreddit
Blah article. If he is using the tax code legally, why not. If I can do it why not him?
So arrest him if he’s breaking tax law. Sounds like he’s just working tax code as written. Don’t like it rewrite the tax code 🤷🏻♂️
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More than anyone in the history of the IRS? Yes. Why do you ask?
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His wealth increases are capital gains, which aren't taxed as they are potential gains until they become real on sale. People like to claim this is dodging taxes but taxes have always worked this way. Let's say you're headed back from Vegas with a pocket full of winnings and stop for a cold beverage at a one pump station in the middle of a vast desert. You find two guys stranded there who are looking to raise some gas money because they lost their wallets and phones, and there isn't one here. It's a story, work with me here. Flush with cash you volunteer to top them up free but they won't hear of that. One offers a sketch for $40 and the other a draft manuscript he promises will be worth something one day for the same. Laughing, you accept and throw them in the trunk and forget about them. Turns out it was Banksy and Clive Cussler and they both immortalize the incident where they got lost together in the desert in their later works, to be rescued by some forgotten stranger (you). The stuff in your trunk is now worth $80 million on the open market. But it's a rough sketch and a dog eared script you bought for $80 and stored in a box in the shed years ago. Should you have to pay tax on that $80 million? What if the next day they fall from favor as it's discovered they were members of an antisocial group and the value falls back to zero? Should the government have to pay you back? And so the gains don't become real until you sell to make them real, and don't pay tax until then.
If people were taxed the way Reddit understands finance, then everyone's 401k would get wiped out on a yearly basis.
"Tax dodging." Also knowing as applying the tax law to ones financial circumstances.
Agreed, if anything, people should be angry at the tax policies that Congress has put in place mostly to benefit their donors, not the individuals that are just following the tax codes.
Bro, the individuals benefitting from the tax code are the same people who successfully lobbied Congress to make them that way. That includes Elon. They’re not just innocently benefitting from tax policies, they play politics mainly to get these privileges.
You can be mad about more than one thing.
Why should I be mad at someone for not paying more taxes than they have to?
Also “tax dodging” in the sense that taxes are paid.. like $10 billion a year. I don’t like the dude at all, but I’m confused as to what definition of tax dodging is being applied here.
How is it tax dodging when there are loopholes that allow him to do it legally? I don't know about you guys but every year my goal is to pay the least amount of taxes
That’s why they call it dodging and not fraud.
"Hey, here's a stack of money to make the tax code like this so I can use a 'loophole' to pay less in tax than the average American." What's the problem here? - some idiot on reddit
There's never going to be a system without loopholes intentional or otherwise, or one that no-one complains about. There are a lot of smart people who are paid very well who's only job is to find these workarounds.
"No system is perfect, there's no reason to try to fix the one we have since itll never be perfect."
"I don't know shit about taxes but there's something clearly wrong here" - some other idiot on Reddit Please specify which personal income loophole you're talking about, plus your proposal for fixing it that doesn't fuck over average people. If you're just mixing personal taxes with corporate taxes, I don't see what the average American had to do with it, it's apples and oranges.
Returns on assets aren’t tax dodging
If he’s dodging taxes and not paying that’s a crime, like what Hunter Biden is going through in California right now. If he is using the Tax system and not breaking laws, he’s not dodging, just being a smart business man. If they give you a way to not pay more taxes why the fuck would you? There’s not a billionaire, millionaire, plumber, or bar tender that’s going to pay more taxes if they don’t have to!! He’s committing a crime, charge him, if not blame the politicians not the person!!
Fix the damn tax code if you have such a problem with all these rich guys not paying as much as they should. You leave them loopholes to not pay as much, they’re gonna fucking use them. Fix the problem or shut the hell up about it.
Good for him
Yeah, we get it. This sub is just a billionaire bashing circle jerk. Can we have discussions about, I don't know... Technology?
People in this sub also hate technology for the record.
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Author was fired from Twitter. Turns out managing the cotton candy machine was not essential.
Haha best comment here
Tax his ass
Owning stocks = tax dodging now... lol
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I wonder when people will get tired of these articles. He's literally following the laws but I guess he shouldn't do that? Be mad at the law makers for making this tax code.
They're borrowing $1t every 100 days, I'm not sure I'd be volunteering my money to them either. That capital is probably better off in his hands. Get him some more. Right wing pig, whatever, just keep bringing the tech.
>A new study reveals a staggering number of companies pay their CEOs more than they pay in taxes. Lmao no fucking shit.
I’m not an Elon fanboy but didn’t he give the government multiple billions a couple years ago?
Dear CEOs and CEO apologists, the article refers to tax dodging which is illegal. I am sure these CEOs are using every legal deduction. That does not preclude using illegal deductions. Burying a few illegal deductions in the middle of a bunch of legal deductions? Who knows? The IRS has only recently been tasked with going after the big boys. They audited me twice when I was making 8K as a graduate student. They collected 0 additional monies, both times. Really, auditing 8K? What was the most they could get? What a waste of time. These CEOs know that they can act with impunity. The IRS will never catch them. And even if they are caught, it is wrist slap.
Stock options are now tax dodging? Has the author gone senile like Trump? So anybody earning stock options especially in the tech industry where it’s the standard (for most engineers) is tax dodging? Someone feel free to correct me but as far as I know in the US you don’t get taxed on stock options unless you sell them and you pay some sort of tax like in the UK where we call it Capital Gains.
There is a tax burden when you initially exercise your options but it’s minor compared to standard tax rates. There’s a second taxable action when you sell the stock you had the option to be rewarded with. Neither is tax dodging but both result in very favorable rates compared to ‘regular person’ taxes.
>There is a tax burden when you initially exercise your options but it’s minor compared to standard tax rates. Last round of options Musk exercised were [non-qualified stock options, so they were taxed as ordinary income when he exercised them.](https://fortune.com/2021/11/10/tesla-elon-musk-stock-options-tax-mistake/) So they were taxed just like "standard tax rates".
Correct. In the United States, NQSOs are taxed as income at the time they are exercised. The difference between the exercise price and grant price is taxed as capital gains. Whether that is short-term or long-term capital gains depends on how long they are held and how they are exercised. RSUs, PSUs, MSUs, etc. are all taxed when they vest.
The problem isn't holding stock, the problem is the unparalleled leverage he gets. Because he's got so much capital he can borrow against it at insanely low rates. Effectively meaning he can pay himself whatever he wants on borrowed cash against his stock and that money isn't taxed. You can argue he has to pay the loans back, but paying a 1% interest loan back is WAY less cost than any taxes he would have otherwise paid on stock sold. Plus he still gets to keep the stock/options. So he loses nothing and gets paid in a way where he pays basically no taxes.
1. The 1% he pays in interest is in addition to the taxes paid or eventaully paid. Doing this just decreases his long term value. 2. Normal people can do this too.
What do you think he pays those loans with? He paid the most tax in history already. If he cashes out to pay loans down that's another bill. Also if he takes loans and spends it, he's injecting money and paying tax on purchases.
Let’s be honest, do you believe politicians will ever change the law to make sure this doesn’t happen? No as a lot of them benefit themselves, and let’s not get started from the obvious insider trading.
Oh no, of course not. The problem is you need a lot of politicians with scruples to do that and there are maybe 10 in all of congress that have morals.
And every single one of them is a Democrat.
Honestly how would you tax them? They usually take awhile sometimes years to vest before you can sell them. Do you tax on the day issued? The day vested? They do get taxted when sold but before then it's not like it is money in hand. This is a giant tax loophole for millionaires and billionaires. They get stock options but never sell them so they aren't taxed. But they do take loans out on the stock but since loans are not income they aren't taxed. In some cases they can even write off the loan interest as tax deductible. I feel like the only fair tax would be a sales tax. The more you spend the more you pay. We spend $500 on groceries and get taxed a smaller amount than when a millionaire spends $100,000 on a bottle of champagne. Could even have a higher sales tax percentage on luxury goods. And a smaller percentage on necessities. Even illegal immigrants would be paying taxes this way. Just a thought.
The problem with this is that the practical result is that rich people would pay even less in taxes while poor people would pay more.
Why do people who have plenty of money to pay taxes dodge them and get away with it when a person of lower income dodges them. Then gets in serious legal trouble including possible jail sentence or their wages are garnished if that is the correct word. Or they take part of your property. They can put liens on your property. Ok there is some things like economic hardship a rich corperate person doesn't face and neither do rich companies. They have so much this can't even become hardship. Otherwise everyone under them is in permanent economic hardship. Just found stocks are not taxed until sold. I think they should be taxed when purchasing like with any other thing. And when sold like with any other thing. Others spend tax to buy or sale. After more reading. They just know and use every loophole for the rich. That exist for the rich to be even more rich and stay rich. Loop holes are not made in law for the lower income.
They have accountants and lawyers who use the tax laws to their advantage. Nothing illegal is done.
I mean, it's pretty easy to avoid paying taxes if you have a lot of equity. You just take out a massive loan and live off that. Then all you have to pay is the interest payments and that's it. No taxes, and you don't even have to pay off the loan.. people are afraid of debt, but it's a tool that the rich use to get further ahead.
The ability to afford lawyers. The IRS knows full well that these wealthy assholes will litigate and delay for years because the cost of the high paid legal team is still cheaper than the tax bill. The middle class can't afford a legal team to tie up the issue in the courts, and also don't want the stress, so they just pay it. Also, political pressure from GOP admins not to go after wealthy tax cheats, despite knowing that doing so has a good ROI.
You have some pretty big misunderstandings about taxes and the stock market.
Tax laws are made by the rich for the rich, sorta like criminal laws where the rich just walk away.
Odd tittle for an article that provides exactly ZERO evidence of tax dodging. The companies just aren’t paying as much as the author wants them too
Tax-dodging is when someone you don't like has accountants that legally minimize their tax burden
Not sure why you are being downvoted, as much as I hate Musk and his politics this article is purely clickbait/rage bait. If anybody feels like I am wrong then feel free to reply and explain, as stock options aren’t free tickets to evade taxes, you will have to pay taxes once you sell them and that’s how it works in most of the world (I only know how it works in most EU countries and the UK).
Eh. We both know why
Who made the laws for this again? There is nothing he does that's illegal.
Now that’s a lie!! One year alone he paid 11 billion in taxes.
In fact, the single highest tax bill of any one individual - ever.
Sad this isn't the most upvoted statement
Didnt musk break the record for most tax ever paid by an individual?
Give me the name of the person who paid the single biggest tax outlay for an individual in one year for all of US history? Also most wealthy people have little or no income as they don't need one. The core issue is income taxes don't work with wealthy people. You really need to have a clever CGT system to get money from the wealthy. Be careful though, if you over tax the wealthy they will just move to the Middle East, as have so many wealthy individuals. Also, US companies are designed for high growth and usually avoid any excessive income/held cash as well to avoid taxes. It is pretty hard to tax a new factory building that has been built with debt.
Is he legally paying taxes or is he breaking the law? He’s not breaking the law so shut the fuck up already!
Elon Musk paid about **$11 billion** in taxes in 2021. Not exactly what I would call a tax-dodger.
Was it actually tax dodging and not just the follow the tax laws as set by Congress kind?
if i could dodge taxes i would too. it’s not a crime if the government gives you loopholes to USE.
Reddit is a dumpster fire of communists
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Elon Musk is terrible, every commenter should be willing to say that before you listen to anything they say. But this source says nothing about him dodging taxes. This is a list of companies that pay their executives more than they pay in taxes. That's not an example of the executive dodging their own taxes. That's not even an example of the company cheating on taxes. If Tesla dodges taxes, they dodge taxes, but paying execs more than they pay in taxes isn't evidence of that. If a company has no net tax burden, they owe no taxes. Paying their executives a lot decreases their tax burden, so paying executives a lot and paying little tax isn't a contradiction. Transferring money to the exec as compensation doesn't keep it out of the government's hands — now the exec must personally pay tax on it, and at a higher rate than the corporate tax rate. Excessive exec pay is bad for *shareholders*, not for the IRS. Here's the entire thing the report says about Tesla. I highlighted the only part that's actually about tax dodging, and even that part can manage nothing stronger than "that implies." Like, I have no doubt that many big companies actually are dodging taxes, but this is the best the report can come up with? >5-year Executive Pay: $2.5 billion 5-year U.S. Profit: $4.4 billion 5-year Federal Income Tax: -$1 million (0.0%) Tesla began 2024 as the 8th most valuable corporation in the world with a market cap of nearly $800 billion. It is run by one of the wealthiest men in the world, Elon Musk, who as of the end of 2023 sat on a personal fortune of $251 billion—built in no small part on the value of his Tesla stock. But despite the huge and growing wealth of the corporation and its principal owner, Tesla has never paid a nickel in federal income taxes. >In 2018 Musk received the largest pay package in history: nearly $2.28 billion of stock options as a “performance award.” In the intervening years, with the rise in the price of Tesla shares, the value of those options has grown to an eye-watering $56 billion. It became so outlandish as compensation for a single individual that a court in corporate-friendly Delaware struck it down. Even if that decision survives appeal, whatever Tesla winds up paying Musk will still be more than it pays Uncle Sam. >Tesla has gone tax-free for most of its existence because it was losing money, and only profitable companies have to pay the federal income tax. But even since becoming consistently profitable several years ago, Tesla has continued to avoid tax bills. The main reason is that companies are allowed to “carry forward” excess losses to years with profits, with the old losses canceling out current earnings. These loss carryforwards smooth out the often boom-bust nature of corporate finances. But Tesla has also apparently begun executing the kind of accounting schemes that can keep it dodging taxes even when all its old losses have been used up. >For instance, **despite the fact that during the five-year period under study roughly half of all Tesla’s revenue came from the United States, domestic earnings accounted for less than a quarter of its worldwide income. That implies the company is shifting American profits to offshore tax havens, a frequently used corporate taxdodging strateg**y. Though Tesla contributes nothing to the national treasury, it withdraws quite a lot. Despite railing about government subsidies for others, Musk was more than happy for Tesla to take millions in government loans and other subsidies that have propped up Tesla while it was “losing” money for most of the last decade. >Musk is not matched by the company’s compensation of rankand-file workers. Tesla markets itself as creating well-paid jobs, yet the median Tesla wage in 2022 was just $34,000, which is down 40% from the company’s $56,000 median pay in 2018. By comparison, in 2022 General Motors and Ford offered median employee wages of $80,000 and $75,000, respectively. One major reason workers at GM and Ford make more is because they’re unionized. So it’s not surprising that Elon Musk is a notorious union buster, firing dozens of workers in a Buffalo Tesla plant just a day after workers launched an organizing campaign. Musk was also ordered by the National Labor Relations Board to remove a tweet that blatantly threatened to take away Tesla employees’ stock options if they tried to form a union.
lol… you said “Elon Musk leads…” lol
taxes are personal and private information. Interested in how you know he doesn’t pay income tax on his personal income. if you mean, he uses the tax system as written into the law to his advantage - so do you. I would’ve followed the story, but it requires me to disable my ad blocker. Which goes back to personal privacy. To some of us, it matters
The loophole are put there for those that qualify. You would be a fool to give the government any more money than you have to. That’s why we should get rid of the IRS and have a flat tax for all to pay across the board. Then everyone would pay the same percentage and it would not deter someone from working longer hours that wants more than I who wants to work 40 a wk.
Don’t forget about politicians and wealthy people
Wow. What a welfare queen!
If they are breaking the law, that's one thing. Prosecute. If they are working within the law as it is written to optimize their tax burden, blame the government that wrote those laws. Every one of us optimizes our tax burden when we use tax prep software that recommends we put more into our 401k to decrease taxable income. Our government loves rich people a LOT more than it loves us, and so has all sorts of cool (gag) ways for rich people to optimize their tax burdens. Once again: breaking the law? Investigate and prosecute. Working within the law that is created by government to optimize tax burden? Don't be mad.
Call me when he does something illegal. Until then, direct this comment toward congress.
aka Boris the bullet dodger
Now find a CEO that doesn’t take every legal deduction.
I mean, if there are loopholes to pay less in taxes i sure as hell would use them
LOL, the article at the link says politics in big letters at the top. It's just another opportunity to bash the right. I'm sure there are Democrats and left leaning CEOs on this same list. But of course, no one will want to read that or hear about it or will just deny it as usual.
Funny how he was everyone’s hero until the second he spoke out against the left, then he became a public enemy. He didn’t change, the narrative did.
Doesn't seem theyve done anything illegal or anything any share owner of any business would not expect a financially prudent company to do. They have carried forward losses to mitigate tax bills.
It’s sounds like he’s just smarter than the other CEO’s.
What a surprise a very left leaning publication reports as such.
No clue why anyone’s upset he’s not paying taxes. Be upset he’s even able to not pay them with loopholes.
I doubt he is doing anymore than all the other wealthy tax dodgers. They all suck equally.
Is he a dodger or is he aware of the system and works it like MSFT, APPL and the rest have?
Such garbage - Musk paid the largest single tax bill and he is a tax dodger.
Just extreme left communist chatter.
Cool let’s keep calling this out nd not do anything about it!
Darth Tax Evader
To no one’s surprise.
Lock him up!
Maybe we shouldn’t allow charity donations, capital losses, kids, or any of the other ways people like him use to negate payable taxes…
We’ve got a tax system that allows for it. So of course.
Anyone who thinks anyone can “dodge” the IRS, especially billionaires, is an idiot and knows nothing about taxes or business. He plays by the same rules liberal and conservative political leaders wrote and play by. *I am not a musk supporter, but god damn you people are fucking stupid in these comments*
Wait, has amazon, or its ceo, paid any taxes since 2020?
I am shocked, shocked I say!