Here's How Much Elon Musk Paid in Taxes This Year

On Sunday night, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, tweeted that he will be paying over $11 billion in taxes this year:

For those wondering, I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 20, 2021

The tweet comes a week after Musk got into a Twitter spat with Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) about paying taxes. Warren used the occasion of Musk being named Time‘s “Person of the Year” to accuse him of not paying taxes and call him a “freeloader.”

Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else. https://t.co/jqQxL9Run6

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) December 13, 2021

Musk hammered back at her hard, linking an article about her pretending to be Native American, comparing her to a childhood friend’s angry mom, and calling her “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

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2021

Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen 🙏

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2021

CNBC is reporting that Musk’s tax bill may be as high as $15 billion — a combined state and federal tax rate of 54.1% — on sales of Tesla stock as he exercises his options.

Musk was awarded options in 2012 as part of a compensation plan. Because he doesn’t take a salary or cash bonus, his wealth comes from stock awards and the gains in Tesla’s share price. The 2012 award was for 22.8 million shares at a strike price of $6.24 per share. Tesla shares closed at $1,222.09 on Friday, meaning his gain on the shares totals just under $28 billion.

Back in November, Musk polled his 62.7 million Twitter followers about whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock so that he could realize the gain and pay taxes. He noted that “I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.” His followers voted for him to sell.

Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.

Do you support this?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

So, will Musk’s $15 billion be enough for the Sen. Warrenses and Sanderses of the world to consider him to be paying his “fair share”? Leftists love to use subjective terms like “fair” as they push for socialist policies. Subjective policy goals can never be clearly defined, so Big Left can keep moving the goalposts (and pushing us leftward) forever.

The only truly, objectively, provably fair tax is a flat tax, of course. If everyone pays the same rate, say 10%, then everyone pays the same proportion of their income. So if you make $100, you pay $10, and if I make $1,000, I pay $100; I make ten times as much as you and I pay ten times as much tax as you. It’s beautiful in its flawless logic.

But Democrats will never approve anything that is so mathematically simple to prove because math is racist.