By John Ikani
Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and Chief Executive Officer of Tesla, said on Twitter that he’ll pay more than $11 billion (€9.77bn) in taxes this year, an amount that could constitute a record payment to the US Internal Revenue Service.
Musk took to Twitter to announce his tax commitments, writing: “for those wondering, I will pay over $11bn in taxes this year.”
On Twitter, Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren had earlier said that Musk should pay taxes and stop “freeloading off everyone else”. The remark had come after Time magazine named him its “Person of the Year”.
In the reply, Musk had said that he “will pay more taxes than any American in history this year”.
Earlier, Time magazine’s choice for ‘Person of the Year’ 2021 had not gone down well with several critics, who slammed the publication. It was being called ‘worst choice ever’ as billionaire Elon Musk was criticised for opposition to unions, attitude towards tax and playing down Covid dangers.
Time had described Musk as a “clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman” while talking about his achievements.
Musk is the world’s richest person and his company Tesla is worth about $1 trillion. Over the last few weeks, Musk has sold nearly $14 billion worth of Tesla shares.
Before selling his shares in November, Musk asked followers on Twitter whether he should do so, an act that may have driven the share price down and cut his tax bill. Some of the share sales had been planned for months, making the outcome of the poll irrelevant.
Musk had been opposing a “billionaires tax” floated by some lawmakers in US. He and some other super-wealthy people in the country paid tax at a very small rate in comparison to their significant rise in wealth from 2014 to 2018, said a probe by Propublica this year. Musk allegedly paid only a “real” rate of 3.27%.
He has also been critical of President Joe Biden’s spending plans, which have included higher taxes for billionaires, and said taxpayers should not pay for electric car subsidies.
