Elon Musk says he will pay more than $11BILLION in taxes this year - after Elizabeth Warren called him 'the world's richest freeloader' in bitter war of words
Elon Musk has claimed he will pay more than $11billion in taxes this year after Elizabeth Warren accused him of 'freeloading' during a bitter war of words between the pair.
The Tesla CEO, 50, took to Twitter to claim he would be paying billions of dollars in taxes this year following a row with Massachusetts Sen. Warren over his taxes.
He wrote: 'For those wondering, I will pay over $11billion in taxes this year.'
Musk could face a tax bill of more than $10billion in 2021, which could be the largest individual payment to the Internal Revenue Service, according to calculations by Bloomberg News.
It comes amid claims that Musk 'paid nothing' in federal income taxes in 2018 and less than $70,000 in 2015 and 2017, while Warren dubbed Musk 'the world's richest freeloader' amid a row over the billionaire's taxes.
Musk responded to her criticism by saying that he 'will pay more taxes than any American in history this year'.
Elon Musk (pictured) said he would be paying billions of dollars in taxes this year following his row with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren over his taxes
He took to Twitter to announce that he would be paying more than $11billion in taxes this year
Musk is currently the richest man in the world with a net worth of $265.4billion, as of last Monday, followed closely behind by Amazon's Jeff Bezos.
His company Tesla is worth about $1trillion and over the last few weeks, Musk has sold nearly $14billion worth of Tesla shares.
Musk and Warren's war of words began after the news broke that Musk was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year.
Warren tweeted last Monday: 'Let's change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.'
But Musk soon hit back, writing 'Stop projecting', and dubbing the politician and former law professor 'Senator Karen'.
'You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend's angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason,' Musk continued.
'Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen.'
He also shared a link to a Fox News opinion article claiming Warren lied about having Native American heritage to benefit from affirmative action.
It comes after Warren (pictured) dubbed Musk 'the world's richest freeloader' during a war of words over the billionaire's taxes
But in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, Warren clapped back, calling Musk 'the world's richest freeloader,' and claiming he 'evidently has a very thin skin'.
Joy Reid gave the Massachusetts senator a chance to respond to Musk's now infamous 'Senator Karen' tweet.
The MSNBC host prefaced her interview by calling Musk 'the absolute worst,' highlighting his opposition to President Joe Biden's Build Back Better agenda, and noting that, even though he has called for an end to government subsidies, electric vehicle subsidies helped Tesla get ahead.
Elon Musk was named Time Magazine's 2021 Person of the Year
Then, after quoting Warren's tweet, Reid touted a ProPublica report, saying: 'Its investigation found that in 2018, Musk paid nothing in federal income taxes, and less than $70,000 in 2015 and 2017.'
She then turned the conversation over to Warren to get her thoughts on Musk's tweet about her, to which Warren replied: 'The world's richest freeloader evidently has a very thin skin.
'But you know the part that makes me angry about this?' she continued.
'It's on behalf of every public school teacher, every waitress, every computer programmer, every street cleaner who actually paid taxes, and that means they paid more than Elon Musk did in federal income taxes.
'And that's just not right, and it means the system is broken.
'But the days when these guys not only get to rake it all in, but then rub everybody else's nose in it while they head off into outer space and declare how they did this all on their own when they were subsidized by the federal government and subsidized by every waitress and public school teacher who paid their taxes' is over.
'This is wrong and Elon Musk needs to eat a big dish of that,' she concluded.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized Telsa CEO Elon Musk after he was named Time Magazine's 2021 Person of the Year. She called on him to pay his fair share of taxes
Musk attacked the senator on Twitter and dubbed her Senator Karen
Warren's tweet was not the first time the billionaire has slammed politicians critical of his wealth and alleged exploitation of tax loopholes to pay little or no taxes at all.
Last month, Musk mocked Sen. Bernie Sanders who called on the nation's 'extremely wealthy' to pony up more cash in a tweet, drawing the attention of Musk, who had sold more than $5billion of his Tesla stake.
Musk did so after launching a Twitter poll that guided him toward selling $25 billion in stock to fund President Joe Biden's proposed billionaire tax.
Musk, responding to Sanders' demands, indicated he wouldn't draw the line there.
'I keep forgetting that you're still alive,' Musk, the world's richest man, tweeted at the senator.
'Want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the word …'
He also attacked Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, of Oregon, who supported a wealth tax for billionaires and criticized Musk's twitter poll.
'Whether or not the world's wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn't depend on the results of a Twitter poll,' Wyden wrote. 'It's time for the Billionaires Income Tax.'
Musk lashed back by mocking Wyden's face, writing, 'Why does ur pp look like u just came?'
Musk attacked senators Bernie Sanders and Ron Wyden after they also complained about his lack of paying taxes and called on billionaires to pay their fair share
His row with Warren, though, comes as the Tesla founder was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year after selling off his possessions and moving to Texas, launching rockets into space, inventing new driverless cars, sharing his Asperger's diagnosis while hosting Saturday Night Live and influencing the stock market with this tweets.
In his bid to become the Person of the Year, Musk spoke with Time Magazine and discussed his 'semi-separated' status with Grimes, slammed vaccine mandates as an 'erosion of freedom' and shared his plans to fly a Noah's ark spaceship packed full of animals to Mars as he works to colonize the planet.
As of Monday, Musk has a net worth of $265.4billion. Speaking about being the richest man in the world and all of history Musk pointed to someone who he claims is even richer than he is.
'Well, I think there's like some, you know, sovereigns. I think [Russia's] President Putin is significantly richer than me. I can't invade countries and stuff,' Musk said.
'When looking at income and asset distribution, it is very important to normalize that for age. So as societies age, there are more older people; the older somebody is, the richer they are,' he explained.
'But a lot of the push for higher government involvement and expropriation of assets by the government is pushed by a bunch of politicians who are actually saying that resources shouldn't be in control of private individuals. They should be in control of the government,' Musk said.
One of the billionaire's biggest criticisms is his enormous wealth, while paying little to none in taxes.
Recently, he openly bashed President Joe Biden's Build Back Better Plan, which is fully funded by 'the very largest corporations and the wealthiest Americans'.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO made history several times this year including SpaceX's September launch of the first all-civilian crew into space. The aerospace company also won a $3 billion contract with NASA - sparking a feud with fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos.
Musk (pictured in January 2020) is the richest man in the world with a net worth of $265.4billion, as of last Monday, followed closely behind by Amazon's Jeff Bezos
The SpaceX CEO commented on the success of the aerospace company.
'If we have ships and boosters but no engines, we would be losing billions of dollars a quarter. And if that continued, then bankruptcy would not be out of the question,' he admitted.
'I feel as though we've had many years of success and a lot of people at the company have never seen a launch failure. A lot of people have never in their career experienced a recession,' Musk boasted.
'If somebody entered the workforce after 2009, it just seemed like things always go up. I was concerned that we may be getting complacent,' he shared.
Musk has described himself as a 'utopian anarchist' and aims to utilize his businesses to create a more efficient and automated future.
'If there's a utopia where people have access to any goods or services that they want, there's plenty for everyone. If we have a highly automated future with the robots that can do anything, then any work you do will be because you want to do it, not because you have to do it. I don't mean to suggest chaos, but rather that you're not under anyone's thumb,' Musk said.
In 2012, when Tesla was just a fledgling company, Musk was awarded stock options as part of a compensation plan that would give him 22.8 million shares at a stock price of $6.24. His gains on those shares have now reached nearly $28 billion.
Stock options give the investor the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell a stock at an agree-upon price. It also allows the trader to choose a specific date when they expect a stock to rise or fall, known as the expiration date, according to Investopedia.
In Musk's case, his stock options come due in August 2022, and in order to exercise them, Musk has to pay the the income taxes on the gains, and since they are taxes as an employee benefit or compensation, they will be taxed at 37 percent, plus the 3.8 percent net investment tax, CNBC reports.
Musk will also have to pay the top tax rate in California, since the options were granted and earned when he was a California resident.
Combined, CNBC reports, the state and federal tax rate on his gains will be 54.1 percent, so the total tax bill would be $15 billion by August.
Meanwhile, Telsa has disclosed that he has taken out loans using his shares as collateral, and with the sales, he may want to repay some of those obligations.
As the company noted in its third-quarter Securities and Exchange 10Q filing: 'If the price of our common stock were to decline substantially, Mr. Musk may be forced by one or more of the banking institutions to sell shares of Tesla common stock to satisfy his loan obligations if he could not do so through other means.
'Any such sales could cause the price of our common stock to decline further.'
Tesla closed at $975.99 on Wednesday, up more than 1 percent from the day before.
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December 20, 2021
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