Elon Musk says he will pay more than $US11bn in taxes this year
The world’s richest person is set to pay more than $15bn in taxes this year after sparring with US Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Billionaire Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, said he will pay more than $US11bn ($A15.47bn) in taxes this year.
The Tesla chief executive made the disclosure in a tweet on Sunday without offering additional details.
“For those wondering, I will pay over $US11bn in taxes this year,” Mr Musk said on Twitter.
For those wondering, I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2021
Mr Musk is the world’s wealthiest person with a net worth of $US243bn as of Sunday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The majority of that wealth is tied up in Tesla and his rocket company, Space Exploration Technologies.
He sparred last week with Senator Elizabeth Warren, who called on the billionaire to pay more in taxes. “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else,” Ms Warren tweeted, referring to Mr Musk who was recently named Time magazine’s person of the year.
Mr Musk responded at the time by saying that he will pay more taxes than any American in history this year.
Mr Musk is compensated in stock awards and doesn’t accept a cash salary from Tesla. He launched a Twitter poll last month asking people whether he should sell 10 per cent of his Tesla holdings, which voters backed. He framed the poll question in the context of a continuing debate about how some of America’s wealthiest individuals should be taxed.
Tesla shares dropped 2 per cent on Monday, briefly falling below $US900 for the first time since October. The stock is up for the year, though it has lost roughly a quarter of its value since Mr Musk launched the Twitter poll and his ensuing stock sales.
He faces an August 2022 deadline to convert roughly 22.9 million vested stock options into shares or let them expire worthless, according to a regulatory filing. He would need about $US143m to exercise those options, and could owe more than $US9bn in federal income and Medicare taxes upon exercising them.
Under California law, Mr Musk also likely would face a sizeable state tax burden because exercised options are treated as compensation partly earned in the state while he lived there.
That California tax likely would be due even though Mr Musk said in late 2020 that he had moved to Texas. The state of Texas doesn’t impose individual income or capital-gains taxes. He has also said he is moving Tesla’s headquarters to Austin, Texas, from Silicon Valley.
Mr Musk previously ridiculed a proposed tax on billionaires’ unrealised capital gains, saying on Twitter that eventually the government runs ” out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”
The Wall Street Journal
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