Elon Musk announces he will pay record taxes in 2021
Alexandre Schmid December 20, 2021 at 6:05 p.m.67© Naresh777 / Shutterstock.com
After years of evading income tax, Elon Musk will finally go to the cash register and pay the US tax authorities a record amount.
At the bend of a laconic tweet, Elon Musk tells us that he will pay for the year 2021 a total of more than 11 billion dollars in taxes and duties.
Gains from the sale of Tesla shares taxed
According to CNBC, this could be the largest contribution in US tax history for a single person in a single year.
The entrepreneur at the head of, among others, Tesla and SpaceX, had been strongly criticized a few months ago for not paying income taxes when he is considered to be the richest man of the planet.
At the beginning of November, Elon Musk asked on Twitter if he should sell shares of Tesla in order to be taxed on the income from these sales. The response from Internet users was positive, and the eccentric businessman then executed, offloading Tesla shares worth billions of dollars.
No income, no taxes
Until now, Elon Musk escaped taxes by not paying himself any salary from his companies, nor bonuses. Without income, he was therefore not taxed, the possession of stock market securities not being taxed.
When he needs money, Elon Musk resorts to bank loans to finance himself. He has the ability to obtain large loans from financial institutions, at very low interest rates, because he has his shares in the various companies in which he has invested as collateral. A strategy that has earned him criticism from part of the American political class.
Elon Musk's fortune is estimated at $244 billion. If he made a show of selling his Tesla shares, he would have been forced to pay taxes anyway to exercise his rights to stock options obtained in 2012 and which were to expire in the summer of 2022. flowing now, it avoids possible higher taxation next year, if a law carried by the Democrats were to pass.
Source: Twitter , CNBC
- Prev
- Next
