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Elon Musk has revealed how much he gets taxed each year and its more than you'd expect.
On December 6, 2021, at the Wall Street Journal's virtual CEO Council Summit, Musk revealed how much he pays in taxes.
Musk who is CEO of Tesla in and Space Exploration Technologies Corp also weighed in on 'anti-billionaire B.S'.
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Speaking to interviewer Joanna Stern, Musk stated 'There’s all this anti-billionaire B.S. Well, if you zeroed out all the billionaires, you still wouldn’t solve the deficit'.
In response, Stern asked Musk that is he were elected to congress how would he calculate tax for billionaires.
To which Musk said 'First of all, I pay a lot of tax. I mean, my marginal tax rate is, like, 53%. So that’s not trivial'.
And that is a higher percentage than we'd expected.
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To put that figure in perspective, following the conference on December 20, Musk said 'for those wondering, I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year'.
The tweet came as a response to Elizabeth Warren, who accused Musk of 'freeloading' when it comes to paying taxes.
The Massachusetts representative took issue with Musk's Time magazine 'Person of the Year' cover and took to Twitter to share her views.
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Warren said 'Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else'.
Musk obviously took issue with the statement and reaffirmed the astronomical amount of taxes he said he would pay in conversation with Stern.
The Tesla CEO later wrote 'if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year'.
Robert Willens, a Columbia University professor and tax expert said the comment from Musk was fair, with the tech CEO making himself liable for 'mind-boggling amounts of taxable income' in 2020 after exercising stock options that would have otherwise expired, as per the BBC.
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Willens noted that Musk 'probably felt it would be prudent to generate as much taxable income in 2021 as possible, on the theory that income in 2022 might be taxed at higher rates'.
While the tax figures for Musk seem high, the numbers are proportional to his income for the tax year and his decision to exercise his expiring stock options is a standard approach for a corporate executive.
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Shola Lee