Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire last week when the Initial Public Offering of shares in SpaceX vaulted him into the stratosphere of wealth. The world’s richest man may or may not ever get to Mars (he promised a colony there by 2025) but stretched end to end, a trillion dollar bills would be more than enough to go to the Red Planet and back.
But Musk gained his wealth in large part by freeloading at taxpayer expense. Until last week when it went public, the rocket company’s finances were privileged information. But a New York Times analysis found that, despite receiving billions in government funded contracts, “SpaceX has most likely paid little to no federal income taxes since its founding in 2002 and has privately told investors that it may never have to pay any, according to internal company documents.”
What about Tesla, now worth over five times as much as Toyota, its nearest competitor in the car business? Once again, Mr. Musk has been a mooch. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “Tesla Reported Zero Federal Income Tax on $5.7 Billion of U.S. Income in 2025.” That was the year DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency headed by Elon and his gang of idiots made sweeping cuts to Veterans Hospitals, National Parks and other essential services in the name of curbing fraud. That same year, Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” was sailing through Congress, making it even easier for corporations like Tesla to pay exactly nothing in taxes.
And what about personal income taxes? How do they impact the world’s richest man? The typical American sees about 14% of his or her paycheck withheld for the IRS, Social Security and Medicare. I know I do. But the super-rich have ways to avoid all that. Several years ago Pro Publica obtained records showing Musk’s personal tax burden is miniscule compared to his fortune. “In 2015, he paid $68,000 in federal income tax. In 2017, it was $65,000, and in 2018 he paid no federal income tax.” On a trillion dollars, $68,000 is an effective tax rate of .000068 percent, bringing to mind F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous quote that “The rich are different from you and me.” Fitzgerald forgot to elaborate, that billionaires write the laws in their own favor that let them sponge off the rest of society.
From one perspective, it's all perfectly legal. From another vantage, it's theft pure and simple. They are ripping off the ordinary working folks who keep our economy humming, meanwhile reaping all the rewards as gains in productivity and GDP flow overwhelmingly to the top tenth of the top one percent. The Robber Barons were not called robbers for nothing.
How do they get away with it? Because they can. With the gap between them and us widening every day, it is past time to take back our democracy by requiring men like the World’s Richest Mooch to pay their fair share.
