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Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, paid $11 billion in taxes, but Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) claimed he was still not paying his 'fair share.'
Musk was chastised earlier this month by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), another progressive senator, for "freeloading off everyone else" and benefitting from "the skewed tax code." Musk replied to Warren: “And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year.”
Jayapal chimed in by saying that Musk should have paid more.
“Elon Musk made $36 BILLION in one day, but wants to brag about paying an $11 billion tax bill,” said Jayapal. “Oh yeah, he also added more than $270 BILLION in wealth just since the pandemic started. Time for the rich to pay their fair share.”
Elon Musk made $36 BILLION in one day, but wants to brag about paying an $11 billion tax bill.
— Pramila Jayapal (@PramilaJayapal) December 24, 2021
Oh yeah, he also added more than $270 BILLION in wealth just since the pandemic started.
Time for the rich to pay their fair share.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), Jayapal's colleague, was also chastised on Sunday for withdrawing his support for President Biden's $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act.
“Nearly a year ago, President Biden laid out his Build Back Better agenda: a broad vision to meet the individual and collective challenges Americans face, necessarily ambitious to address crises both created and exposed by the pandemic,” Jayapal wrote. “For most of 2021, Democrats worked to pass legislation that realizes that vision. The president negotiated with Congress, including Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) directly. Sen. Manchin committed to the president — who relayed that commitment to House members — that he would support the legislative framework unveiled on Oct. 28.”
“But on Dec. 20, Sen. Manchin went back on his commitment to the president and seemingly killed the bill on national television,” Jayapal said. “In a town where your word is everything, this was a stunning rebuke of his own party’s president.”
“Despite that, we must move forward,” she continued. “The president’s agenda is even more urgent today. The omicron variant is surging as covid-19 has once again disrupted people’s ability to work, care for children and elders, access medical care and make ends meet. We simply cannot abandon our vision.”
Jayapal said that Manchin’s decision neglected the purported needs of women and minorities. “People of color, women and young people helped deliver the White House and Congress to Democrats, but their needs were consistently delayed in search of bipartisanship,” she complained.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg explained that Musk’s stock options would be the primary driver of his tax bill.
“The world’s richest person and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. could face a tax bill of more than $10 billion for 2021, if he exercises all his options due to expire next year,” Bloomberg reported. “While it’s hard to say whether that would be a record — the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t publicly reveal individual tax filings — it would certainly rank as one of the biggest payments of all time.”
“Musk faces the unusually high tax bill after exercising almost 15 million options and selling millions of shares to cover the taxes related to the transactions,” Bloomberg added.
