Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, announced that he will pay 11 billion dollars in taxes this year.
Musk’s statement on Twitter came after he got involved in a debate on social media about how much tax he paid.
Earlier this week, Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren said on Twitter that Musk “should stop living off of others”.
“For those wondering, I will pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year,” Musk replied.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1472754632325795843
Musk, the founder of electric car maker Tesla and spacecraft maker SpaceX, became the richest person in the world earlier this year.
The Bloomberg Billionaires Index puts Musk’s fortune at $243 billion. Tesla is worth $1 trillion and SpaceX is worth $100 billion.
Last week, Musk was also named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.
This prompted Senator Warren to tweet: “Let’s change the fraudulent tax law so ‘Person of the Year’ pays taxes and stops living off of others.”
https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1470415896053227522
Musk responded to Senator Warren’s tweet by saying that he will “pay more taxes this year than any American in history.”
Write ProPublica, a New York-based investigative journalism organization; He wrote that he had seen the tax returns of some of the richest people in the world, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Michael Bloomberg.
ProPublica claimed that Musk did not pay income taxes in 2018.
It was claimed that Musk paid less than $70,000 in taxes in 2015 and 2017.
US President Joe Biden aims to increase taxes on the ultra-rich, even though the bill has not passed Congress so far.
Some senators, including Elizabeth Warren, support the idea of taxing not only the income of the wealthiest US citizens, but also the value of their assets, such as stocks.
Many of the richest in the US do not receive direct taxable salaries. Instead, they keep their wealth in stocks and other investments, then take out loans using those assets as collateral.