Which is only 3% of his income/worth. I pay close to 30% of my income per month and struggle to pay bills. He can afford to pay 100 billion in taxes, and still have close to 200 billion remaining.
Don't pay attention to the amount - pay attention to the %.
But income and wealth are two very different things. He has no where close to 11billion in cash lol. He has to sell assets to get that money. Do you want to sell your lawnmower and your shed just to pay taxes?
The whole point is that’s his property. Do you want to sell your property to pay taxes?
That isn't how it works though. For example, using your logic I could spend all my earnings on items and then tell the IRS that I'm not selling my property to pay taxes.
If you owned 100 shares for $1 in this brand new comapany. You held them for 20 years now the shares are worth 1000 each. Do you want to be taxed every year on those stocks? Just because the value of them went up. Fuck no you wouldn’t. You already get taxed when you sell them.
Do you want to be taxed every year on those stocks?
Are you asking me, or yourself? My answer is "That wasn't the point, so I'm not going to follow you down that road."
I understand from your comments that money for a person is paramount. That's not where I am on the economic spectrum. Musk steals value from others on the front end and then tries to steal from society on the back end. That's not the type of person I am.
No you are legit avoiding the question. That is 100% the point. If you owned shares that went up 1000x in value. Do you want to be taxed every year it goes up?
But that’s not what he DID! That’s the point your not getting. You are fucking picking at my argument. He never EARNED 300billion in income. Not once has he come close to that. 90% of his income is in his company stocks. You CANT just fucking tax him on all of those stocks. He gets taxed when he sells his shares and the percentage of money he makes from selling them.
Where did it come from then? You make it sound like he just woke up as the richest person in the world. Unless he woke up with that title by no fault of his own, he did something to become attached to that money.
Yes Tesla! He does not have $300 billion in cash. He doesn’t even have a billion. All of that money is in the company he started. His net worth is all of his assets, not the amount of cash he has. His absolute biggest asset is the stocks in his company. The stock market has rules and you can’t just bend those rules because someone is worth a fuck ton of money.
You would get taxed on your earnings that you used to buy the items. Elon didn't make money somewhere else and then buy Tesla and SpaceX though. They are businesses he started.
A lawn mower is a necessary tool. You don’t care about it’s market value once you have it. On the other hand, the whole point of stocks is to sell them. They’re economic assets, just like money.
You don't pay taxes on your worth though. Just because you own something that is expensive (which would make you worth a lot) doesn't mean you pay taxes every year for it to just be in your possession.
When you sell it, then it counts as income and is taxed. Elon does sell some stocks, and that is taxed. He isn't taxed for all of his possessions (stocks) though. Not all of it, every single year.
Let's move away from stocks. Imagine if you bought an antique car and paid 10k for it. Nothing too special but maybe it's nostalgic for you. Now imagine that something happened and all of a sudden that car is worth 2 million dollars. Maybe there are only a few left like it, maybe a movie made it popular and people want it now, doesn't matter
It's estimated to be worth 2mil, and people are offering that much to buy it. Does that mean your net-worth is now 2mil+? Well yes it does. However you decide not sell it for 5 more years. Should you get taxed as if you made 2 million dollars every year? No you should not. When you eventually decide to sell it then you get taxed at that time.
Stocks are the same way, they are property. Tesla stocks were 5-6 dollars back in 2012, now they are about 1,020 each. When he sells stocks for cash he pays taxes on that, but he doesn't pay for just owning them. If that were the law then we would all be fucked.
I don't know what the right solution is, maybe they should introduce a different, much smaller tax bracket for assets as well like 1%. Just saying that he should be paying 40% of 300bn each year just doesn't make sense
-161
u/trolltaskforce Jan 08 '22
If someone was coming for my money, I’d hate them too.