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Tesla
TSLA,
CEO and SpaceX founder Elon Musk claims he will pay billions in taxes this year.
In a Sunday night tweet sent to Musk’s over 67 million Twitter
TWTR,
followers, Musk says his tax bill for this year will exceed $11 billion.
The announcement comes shortly after a public spat with Sen. Elizabeth Warren over taxes after the Massachusetts Democrat suggested that Musk has been unfairly allowed to not pay taxes. “Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else,” Warren wrote on Twitter.
“You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason,” Musk answered back.
Billionaires including Musk, Amazon’s
AMZN,
Jeff Bezos, and Berkshire Hathaway’s
BRK.B,
Warren Buffet have avoided paying taxes in some years, according to a recent report from ProPublica.
Over the past few months, Musk has been selling large sums of Tesla stock, even posing a Twitter poll to his followers to see whether or not he should sell more shares.
Read on: Tesla’s $1,900 ‘Cyberquad’ EV for kids sold out, restocked and sold out again
According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk has recently sold nearly 13 million shares of Tesla stock for $13.6 billion — some of the stock sales were already put into motion prior to Musk’s Twitter poll.
It’s been reported that Musk would be facing a tax bill around $15 billion, which could be part of the reason he is selling Tesla shares. Musk also claimed he didn’t have a salary, and therefore must sell stock in order to pay taxes.
Musk, the world’s richest individual, has a total net worth of around $266 billion according to Time, who named him person of the year in 2021.
The tweet from Musk comes as Tesla is preparing for a busy 2022 as the EV maker is set to launch new factories and finally release its much anticipated electric truck.
