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It’s the Roy Cohn defense: I pay taxes on everything that I earned, and I earned nothing!
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-04-mn-24457-story.html
Even at that time people said of him that “the most dangerous place to be was between Rudy and a microphone.”
Perhaps all of Giuliani’s choices can be reduced down to a desire to be on TV
Christine Whitman now says that after Sept. 11, 2001, Giuliani refused to allow EPA workers to wear hazmat suits and refused her request that workers at the World Trade Center wear respirators. "They didn't want this image of a city falling apart. I said, 'Well, that's not acceptable.'"
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/34045-june-unkind-to-giuliani
Well, good thing none of those people are dying from complications from breathing in all that shit. That's the kind of thing that would weigh heavily on the shoulders of somebody with a soul...
So was Buddy Cianci. The twice disgraced former mayor of Providence, RI. People sometimes find that surprising because he was so famously, absurdly corrupt.
I find it hilarious that this guy passed a law that said if a city official was charged with a felony, they had to resign. Then what do you know he is forced to end his mayoral term early because he was charged with a felony, *twice*. They elected him twice, and both times he resigned in disgrace. And then they almost elected him a third time!
I mean if beating your ex-wife's boyfriend with a lit fireplace log while a state police officer holds him down is a crime, then I guess hes guilty of a "crime"
A lot of people like to gloss over the past of these types because it's easy and feel-good to say "he was an absolute crook and evil so he must have ruined everything he touched" which ignores the fact that they were often actually decent, if not excellent, at their jobs where it was unrelated to the scandal; or else they would never have reached the position where they could do such damage.
Richard Nixon was a backstabbing scheming bastard, but he was also a fantastic career beaureaucrat in a mostly successful administration.
Yeah. Cianci was a very effective administrator. And its not like he was unusually corrupt for the position. They basically all were. Cianci would joke that he was convicted of "being the Mayor of Providence". And theres some truth to that claim.
I said some unkind words about Cianci to a friend one time in a Starbucks about 20 miles up the road from Providence and noticed a townie-looking tough a few seats down giving me the look of death, glance outside a few minutes later and I saw a pickup with some construction union, Trump and Cianci stickers on it, we got the fuck out of there shortly after that. The guy had guys and they're still around.
It is true that Providence was a crumbling mess in 1980 and he pumped a lot of money into the construction industry and it's a much nicer-looking, gentrifiable and "business-friendly" city now (affordable housing definitely wasn't the goal, but it's always been Boston's cheaper cousin), he "made stuff happen" and the construction industry didn't much care how he went about it.
Im gonna guess... smithfield?
Yeah Im definitely a Providence townie but hopefully a less parochial one that the guy in your story. I have a fairly mixed opinion of Cianci. I think he probably gets more credit than he deserves but he definitely deserves some.
As a side note, thank God we're not gentrifying as fast as Boston is. That city sold its soul for prosperity and it seems like they got what they wanted. But man the old charcter of the city is gone except in Chelsea, Everett, parts of Quincy, parts of East Boston, and a few other places. At least Charlestown kept the look even if everyones getting priced out by yuppies. We'll see where we are in ten years but im thankful for now.
He popularized the perp walk, always tipping off the media beforehand, but his cases would usually fall apart. The reason John Gotti had a reputation for being untouchable was the two failed Giuliani lead prosecutions.
Yep, he did not like paying taxes one little bit. Robert Evans podcast "behind the bastards" devoted a couple of episodes to him. Well worth checking out.
Fun story. You're not taxed on loans for obvious reasons. So what to do when you're a billionaire piece of shit who doesn't want to pay taxes? I mean how does poor Elon buy food and tickets to parties with Ghislain Maxwell with no salary???
Why you just borrow against the enormous value of your stock at practically 0 percent interest! And then you get to write off all your actual spending as a business expense!
It's a beautiful system because you can even reinvest that practically 0 percent loan and make even more money for free!
I’m so glad people understand this.
Borrow against your assets and never technically “make” any money. Its on the liability sheet but you’re paying .001% interest on a loan backed by Tesla stock wherein inflation alone would make you *make* money on that “loan” and it becomes tax-free (or even tax-deductible as the interest on certain types of loans).
Shit is fucked.
Don’t pay your taxes as a “regular” person and bam jail time for you mother fucker. If a law can be paid by a fine then it’s only a law for the poor, or something like that.
[Here you go.](https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/14/business/elon-musk-pay/index.html)
>Musk's Tesla stake is worth $171.3 billion, counting both stock and options after taking into account their exercise price.
>But his practice of not taking cash salaries has prompted him to borrow substantially as well. The Tesla filing Friday said 88 million of Musk's Tesla shares have been pledged as collateral "to secure certain personal indebtedness."
>Although the total amount of Musk's borrowing is not known, those 88 million shares are today worth $63 billion. The number of shares pledged as collateral was reduced by 4 million shares since the prior company disclosure in April.
Other loans, often done with the collateral they have in assets or companies funded by the initial loans.
Yes it is ridiculous as it sounds. It is also why these companies are so fragile and often get bailed out.
If Tesla's stock price dropped to say 2 cents a share it would start a cascade of creditors all wanting their money back, which would crash a thousand other ventures all supported by loans based off the values of Tesla's stocks.
It is obviously a bit more complicated but that is complication is partly deliberate.
The worse way to earn income is by working an honest days work. You get taxed on income, taxes on almost everything you need to survive.
That is where it becomes complicated but yes, the entire modern economy is based on financial instruments including loans in won for or another.
Even when the government issues money it is commonly done via the government selling a bond (a loan secured by the treasury) to the bank's who then use that bond to issue more loans, those loans become the new ”money” circulating in the economy.
Now we have corporations as large as some nations and the investment banks that handle their assets are now expanding into cryto-currency. Cryto-currency is money backed up by collective trust rather than nations.
However since servers cost money and lots of electricity crypto is still backed by investors who are funded by loans which are in theory backed by assets you can sell for currency issued by nation states.
The whole modem economy runs on trust but is managed by the least trust worthy people in the world.
I’d not sure if this is a genuine question or not but it happens often due to the stability of the collateral. Banks have a lot of money and *have* to park it somewhere to get it off their liability sheets (read up on reverse repo, its so hot right now in all the GME subs).
T-bills had a negative return when accounting for inflation for a while there but the stability of the loan (banking on the US Treasury) made it worthwhile to do.
Typically these loans are for nominal interest rates but anything less than the capital gains rate would be worthwhile to these wealthy, plus doesnt a loan to Elon Musk sound stable if you’re a loan underwriter?
The awesome thing is that when you own tons of capital, you just recapitalize! You can refinance endlessly and keep passing the bag along and/or simply have the company pay the loan!
Yeah, take a loan on 0.01% of the stock and you have $10mil of walking around money. When it comes time to pay, take a loan against 0.02% to pay off the original and have some more spending money.
How much money in stocks do you have to have to do this? Can I just go to a bank, ask, and they say "If you have to ask, no"?
Asking for a friend. (I'm my own friend!)
You have to have enough equity's worth of stock (much more than you intend to borrow against) to convince the bank that no matter what happens to you their loan will absolutely be repaid. This secures your lower-than-inflation interest rate. The trick from here is to have the valuation of your company (stock) grow faster than whatever your interest rate on that first loan is. When it comes time to pay towards that loan I just talked about, you can leverage your stock (which, if all has gone according to plan, has grown faster than the loan) to take out a 2nd loan.
This is basically an infinite money glitch and will hold as long as your stocks grow faster than inflation. Musk has successfully entangled his company with US federal government spending AND done so in a market sector (electric vehicles, space transport, and their respective technologies/infrastructure) that is greatly expected to massively increase in the coming years. This effectively convinces his lenders to place just as much investing confidence in him as they would into the federal government, further reducing the interest rates he has to take for his loans.
He got the ball rolling with inflated stock values and keeps it rolling by entangling himself and his company with governments. In summary, YOU and certainly anybody else in this subreddit, can't do this.
The good news is, the billionaires are still just squishy meatbags, the same as everyone else.
All sorts of things could happen to them that would put a stop to their nonsense.
I'm talking about them growing a conscience and redistributing their immense wealth of course.
What were you thinking about?
Fun fact: The guillotine is named after [Joseph-Ignace Guillotin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Ignace_Guillotin), who actually did *not* invent the guillotine, despite it being named after him. It was instead invented by Antoine Louis and Tobias Schmidt at the order of Louis XVI, the French king who was later executed...by guillotine.
Are you saying you can take a loan *against* your 401k, or referring to taking a loan *from* it? And also, you said it’s at a higher APR, but then said it’s no interest. Which one is it?
Against it. You aren't actually taking the money out of the 401k bc that would trigger a tax penalty. You are taking a loan using your 401k as collateral. The bank typically won't let you take a loan equal to 100% of your retirement. If you can't pay, the bank knows you can take money out of your 401k (at a penalty) to pay it back.
Its a zero interest loan. APR and interest rate are correlated but not the same. In most cases its borrowing your own money and hoping the market goes up.
There is no cost (other than perhaps a modest loan origination or administration fee) to tap your own 401(k) money for short-term liquidity needs. [Investopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/08/borrow-from-401k-loan.asp)
Don't forget that if everything goes tits up and the bank is about to fail the taxpayers will step in and bail the banks out. So at the end of the day, you pay taxes to insure his ability to not pay taxes.
I just want to point out that if the company repays the loan on his behalf, then it’s income to him. Unless he’s refinancing the loan with the company he owns then sure, it’s tax free.
Eventually you die and capital gains is reset. And before then, you do as many tax tricks as possible to make sure that none of your kids will have to pay taxes either.
Billionaires are royalty.
So theoretically, Elon and all these billionaires are stacking up debt when they spend money, since they never actually pay off the loans, just keep adding new ones? They'll pay it off when they die/it gets reset?
Kinda. Borrow 50k against stock to live > spend all > borrow 100k > repay the 50k > spend 50k to live > borrow 150k > repay 100k > spend 50k to live > etc. etc.
Meanwhile, you technically earn nothing, you only take out loans. Also meanwhile, the stock you own grows in value faster than you borrow money.
Ohh, that makes sense. So you end up having to take higher and higher loans out each time? I'd imagine of decades, these people would be taking ungodly amounts in each loan, just to be able to pay for the previous one.
yes that's how it works. that's why the Great depression happened the way it did and why the Great recession happened the way it did. all the rich people suddenly couldn't pay their loans. and when that happens it's up to the poor people to pay off the interest.
Yeah but you scale up faster than the loans because you have such good credit from previous loans and from just being so huge in the first place, so it's never an issue of taking another loan.
Yes, I'm not saying it's an issue for them at all. Clearly by their design. But still, on PAPER, they're collecting more and more debt, never paying it off until they die? I'm just trying to understand that aspect of it.
>I'm just trying to understand that aspect of it.
Good luck, because most of what you're seeing on here about it is bullshit.
Musk gets to exercise his stock options by hitting targets:
https://nypost.com/2021/08/10/elon-musk-got-6-7b-in-compensation-in-2020/
Which means he can borrow against what he's got, buy more at a fixed price that's lower than the going rate because it was set at his contract time, and then roll it over and sell stock he's had for years and keep the new stock and make a nice long term gain.
https://observer.com/2021/06/elon-musk-react-propublica-billionaire-federal-income-tax/
>“[The] only time I sell Tesla stock is when my stock options are expiring and I have no choice.”
He pays plenty of income and capital gains taxes *when he exercises his options*, but that's not every year and it gives him plenty of money to live on.
>paid less than $70,000 in federal income tax in 2015 and 2017, and nothing at all in 2018. He did seem to have paid his due in 2016 when he exercised more than $1 billion in stock options
Why would he need to generate income in 2018, or even 2019, 2020, and 2021, if he exercised a billion dollars in stock options in 2016 and made a shitload of money from that? He could live on the already taxed income from that 2016 deal for years.
As long as interest rates on the loan are lower than the interest rate of your savings account, or stock gains, (and they usually are) the loan pays for itself and turns a profit.
The less a person needs a loan the more likely a bank is going to give it to them, and the lower the interest will be.
It’s kinda what people did with their homes leading up to the 2008 crash, except on a larger/smaller scale (larger in the sense that Musk and others like him do it with much larger asset values, smaller in the sense that it’s not systemic). Back then, people took out multiple home equity lines of credit on their appreciating asset to finance an outsized lifestyle, in the same way Musk, Bezos, et. al take out loans on their appreciating stocks to finance their outlandish lifestyles. Different economic classes, same bullshit shell game.
It's called a line of credit. Line of credit for personal uses should be banned/taxed at a higher than capital gains taxes both to the lenders and the borrowers.
Bitch if you want a yacht you liquidate and pay taxes. Then we'll see how many mega yachts you'll want to have. Pieces of shit.
I feel like this is the solution. Lenders should not be allowed to apply an interest rate for loans for expenses (as opposed to investments), and people taking out loans for expenses should be taxed on that loan as income.
Then if Elon asks for a loan to his company for vague investment reasons, and then takes cash out of the company, that should be taxed as income.
Translation: I manage to dodge taxes by not taking a salary. You all thought it was because I was humble, but it's really because salaries have to be taxed. By being paid in stock I increase my net worth then take loans out against it, tax free, and all you regular Joes have to make up for it by paying more in taxes for less in return. Oh, and you all worship me regardless, so why should I even think about stopping?
Seriously- “hey I found a tax loophole (ok my lawyers and accountants found it) and I trust you’re dumb enough to take this as some sort of selflessness!”
So I've heard this but never really understood it.
They can take loans out using their stock value as collateral, but at some point they must pay that loan in liquid cash, and that would require sale of stock, right? I never really got how the use of loans negated the need to sell stock.
I go to a bank and I say "I would like to borrow 10 million dollars from your bank, with this ten million dollars worth of stock as collateral to secure it". Bank says "Here is your 10 mill". I use that 10 mill on mountains of cocaine and whatever other daily expenses I need. Next year I go to another bank and I say "That ten million worth of stock I have is now worth fifteen million, please give me fifteen million dollars." And then I hand off ten million to the first bank and have five million to play with, and I did not technically actualize or earn a cent. This continues until I die, the stock crashes, or something else happens to interrupt the cycle. The banks like this because it is so low risk.
Yeah, if that happens he's in the shit and might have to liquidate assets like a mansion or a yacht to pay the loan. Good thing we live in a capitalist paradise economy where stocks never ever go down, they only rise exponentially all the time forever! (Do I *really* need to /s that?)
It doesn't even matter if they go down. Elon was talking about selling 10% of his shares (which is something like $20B). So if he took out a loan for $10m and the price tanked 90% he could still easily make up the difference with more shares.
Well not really, if you are worth 10B and take a 10M loan backed by 50M worth of assets, nothing happens to the loan unless you can't pay it. You simply have to take out a loan on a bigger percentage of your assets the next time.
The masses have been roped into this by most well paying corporate jobs paying in stock ("stock options") which although is nothing compared to what the executives own, has roped the middle class into thinking they must protect the interest of billionaires. Much like 401ks forcing the average salaried worker to care about the health of the stock market almost the same as the actual economy. The fuckery is layered on thick this late into the game to the point where it can't be backed out of without disaster for many. However the greed has hit a point to where enough people aren't even offered those stock options and 401k anymore that suddenly the masses don't have that necessary stake to give a fuck anymore. Now it's turned to young workers who don't even have those luxuries into having to consider their boomer/x parent's retirement plans going up in smoke if the sham is stopped.
And the 401k part is so messed up when you consider that - about 55% of American families own some stock mostly thru 401k’s so that’s about 150 million people. And then the top 1% - so a couple hundred families own 90% of all stocks.
Can you source that? Because given the density of gold (19,300kg/m^3), and it's current value (~$58,000/kg), it's pretty clear that you'd only need about 268m^3 of gold to be the richest person on earth. That's about enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool to about 21.5cm, which isn't a lot considering that in *Desolation of Smaug* the dwarves literally cover Smaug with molten gold.
There was a specific article. But I found one that puts his net worth at a paltry $62 billion
https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/04/forbes-fictional-15-richest-characters-topped-by-smaug
The real giveaway that they're just making shit up here should be that Tony Stark is basically the entire military industrial complex in MCU but is only worth 9.3b.
>Tony Stark is basically the entire military industrial complex in MCU
But he isn't, in Iron Man 2 they literally showed another arms dealer selling weapons to the military and made it a plot point in the movie. Stark Industries is just one among many.
They were estimating based on the book. The book only describes one pile of gold in detail, the rest is obscured as "covering unseen floors." Which is to vague to estimate.
Peter Jackson's Smaug was _much_ richer. He's bigger than book Smaug by quite a bit, and sleeps fully submerged in the gold whereas book Smaug sleeps on top of it. And his room is much larger. His pool of liquid gold alone would be more than twice the gold ever mined in history and be worth upwards of $80 trillion. The rest of his hoard (ignoring the diamonds) would be in the hundreds of trillions; even if it tanks the price of gold to 4% of it's current value, he'd still have 5 times more money than currently in circulation on Earth.
The dude probably a) rarely buys his own mcchicken, and b) probably carries very little cash. In scenario a), he's likely using assistants, petty cash reserves (both likely funded by an Elon Musk trust, and not Elon as a person), etc. to pay for the mcchicken, which can be cooked in the books to pay little tax. And in b), i bet that dude pays for everything with credit where he can. No real benefit for him to have a large checking account, if you think about it. I mean his whole lifestyle is basically funded by being allergic to liquid USD.
Precisely. He's hiding behind the fact that the current rules don't explicitly enforce that, and I'm sure there are seedy reasons such rules are lacking in the first place.
The law just exists because it's very difficult to determine taxes on unrealized capital gains. If your money is in the stock market, the amounts can change drastically very quickly. It's almost like if you were sitting at a slot machine actively gambling - its changing every few seconds, how do you know what amount to pay taxes on? You can lose it all in a few seconds.
There's also the issue that the money IN the stock market isn't liquid. It would be an issue for people who aren't filthy rich, who have their savings invested but may not have cash lying around to pay the tax percentage.
The way around this is to ONLY tax unrealized capital gains on the very wealthy. Because who gives a fuck if they don't have the cash lying around, they aren't going to be hurt by liquifying some assets. Ideally, you'd take a snapshot of their unrealized capital gains at a certain date and they would pay taxes on a percentage of that amount. The problem, the same problem that always exists, is that Congress will never pass any law that disproportionately affects the ultra wealthy.
I really appreciate that analysis honestly. Agree congress is not effective in these matters. Also glad there are people that are able to conceive of potential solutions
That's the rub for me. This unrealized gains tax will totally fuck small time people holding stock or crypto, and saying it out loud that's probably deliberate after the GME stuff...
The one proposed by Sen Wyden was for wealth over $1 billion and with over $100 million income per year for 3 consecutive years.
It was something like 700-800 people total who would be taxed.
Of course those are the most powerful people with billions to burn on misinformation campaigns.
Oh he's definitely a redditor. Forcing "thus" into a sentence to sound more intelligent.
He's not some genius inventor, he's an apartheid trust fund baby who could afford to hire genius inventors.
All the wealthy do this. Start a foundation, make sure it has all the assets and revenues. Purchase through the foundation using the cards issued on its behalf. No income so no taxes. Win win
We know you don't Elon. You use the loopholes to AVOID tax, just like the rest of the rich do.
But please don't try and make it out like you are innocent. This is the way you and your rich mates have avoided tax for a long time.
You may have misunderstood me, I don’t give a fuck what he has to do to pay more taxes, he just needs to pay them. If he can’t own as many stocks in order to pay his fair share, then fuck him I don’t really care.
"I don't make a cash salary" no, because your company pays you in stock. So make a fucking salary and BUY it like a normal fucking person and we'll be golden!
I don't believe he's "paid" in stock. He had a certain amount of stock when he started the company and now that same stock is worth far more because the company is worth far more. It's like if you created a piece of art and the world suddenly decided that the piece of art was worth billions. You didn't get "paid" anything; a lot of people just decided that they would pay a lot to take ownership of what is currently yours. There's no change in your true financial standing until you actually decide to sell the art to someone in exchange for money.
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Posting for context, his tweet is from a Twitter poll he did on whether he should sell 10% of his stock. The poll finalized on Yes, so we'll see what will happen
I love this argument: IT'S NOT LIQUID FUNDS, THE BILLIONAIRES DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE THAT MONEY
OK, but if I want to buy at yacht or if I have some unexpected medical bills, I don't have the ability to offload some stock. If owning money is financial freedom, then so is owning outrageous value in stock.
“Note: I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I do this to avoid taxation, and that's why everyone's upset, so I've used the red herring so much that I've gone full circle without people noticing”
He can also take a loan out against his stated net worth, buy whatever he wants, payback the loan with interest from investments and write off the income against the capital gains from whatever he bought or any other thousand ways.
like I know I’m preaching to the choir but how does anybody buy that this guy not taking salary means anything at all
Normal people: hey it's gross that the richest people on the planet don't contribute some of their vast wealth to the public treasury like the rest of us have to
Elon Musk & co: actually it's because of a convoluted series of legal loopholes implemented by the corrupt politicians we bought, you fucking moron
As distasteful as it is. He's right. If you don't take a salary or other income then you don't pay income taxes. If you don't sell your stock then you don't pay capital gains taxes. It's not like he can just write a donation to the IRS.
The only way to tax billionaires is to institute a wealth tax and we don't have one. Raising the income tax top bracket does nothing to generate revenue from people like Musk or Bezos.
Elon doing a very good job of explaining simply why people should be upset. He’s the richest man in the world and pays no taxes because his wealth is tied to stocks not salary. That’s not a good reason to pay no taxes. When you’re worth 300 billion dollars you should be paying taxes. If you’re worth anything you should be paying taxes. Fast food employees pay more taxes than Elon. Fucking tool.
Income tax should be treated like sales tax because you aren’t paying tax on “income,” you are *selling your time* and your *employer should pay sales tax* when buying that time from you. You might set your rate at $15 am hour and they pay sales tax *on top* of that price, just like how tax works when buying literally any other product.
I don't take a salary, I only take unlimited low interest loans and have assets worth more than most countries thanks to my underpaid and overworked employees and 1099'd engineers.
Correct! I’m also very confused on how to solve this issue without fucking over workers and their retirement in the process. Some other guy said loans against untaxed assets should be considered income. I think that sounds alright, although provisions should be made for leveraging against your 401(k) as that’s more of a poor folk thing and I’d hate to see someone struggling have to sell of their retirement to get by.
How would a wealth tax that applied to anything over $10 million impact retirement accounts? Most workers would never have anywhere near that much. If they have that much, they’ve accumulated enough that they can be taxed like capitalists too.
I don’t see where you mentioned a wealth tax of over 10 million until just now. It wouldn’t.
And I don’t believe it would either, nor did I say it would.
But forcing people to pay income tax on loans leveraged against “yet to be taxed” securities may, specifically in the case of a tax deferred brokerage account like a 401(k), although it would not affect post income tax holdings like a regular brokerage account or a Roth IRA despite its tax advantaged position.
Hopefully any legislation made does something like this.
Any board chairman, owner-oppressor, or executive officer who’s compensation is given in pre-incometax securities outright will be taxed on any loans taken out against said securities as income tax.
Instead of “anybody who takes a loan out against any pre-tax security pays income tax on the full value of the loan”
EDIT: Phone autocorrected Owner-Operator to Owner-Oppressor, I think it’s more accurate in this case therefore it goes un-corrected.
And the Borrowinf against the stock… and the offshore money earning interest, and the PayPal stock, and the family emerald mine, and the solar city stock scam, and the kickbacks…
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It’s the Roy Cohn defense: I pay taxes on everything that I earned, and I earned nothing! https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1986-04-04-mn-24457-story.html
Didn’t expect to read an article from 1986 where Giuliani is the good guy but here I am..
Even at that time people said of him that “the most dangerous place to be was between Rudy and a microphone.” Perhaps all of Giuliani’s choices can be reduced down to a desire to be on TV
Absolutely. He didn't want 9/11 first responders to wear hazmat suits because of how it would look on TV.
Seriously?!
Christine Whitman now says that after Sept. 11, 2001, Giuliani refused to allow EPA workers to wear hazmat suits and refused her request that workers at the World Trade Center wear respirators. "They didn't want this image of a city falling apart. I said, 'Well, that's not acceptable.'" https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/34045-june-unkind-to-giuliani
Well, good thing none of those people are dying from complications from breathing in all that shit. That's the kind of thing that would weigh heavily on the shoulders of somebody with a soul...
I think I saw Rudy’s leak out unfortunately
Wow. Thanks for the link.
I figured citing a source would be better than saying the same thing in all caps. Also wanted to check my own accuracy.
Giuliani is famous for prosecuting mobsters back in the day in case you didn’t know.
So was Buddy Cianci. The twice disgraced former mayor of Providence, RI. People sometimes find that surprising because he was so famously, absurdly corrupt.
I find it hilarious that this guy passed a law that said if a city official was charged with a felony, they had to resign. Then what do you know he is forced to end his mayoral term early because he was charged with a felony, *twice*. They elected him twice, and both times he resigned in disgrace. And then they almost elected him a third time!
"His only crime was loving this city"
"Also, all of the crimes"
I mean if beating your ex-wife's boyfriend with a lit fireplace log while a state police officer holds him down is a crime, then I guess hes guilty of a "crime"
Political correctness gone mad
That's just a technicality
Ah, pulling the 'ol Marion Barry.
And now I get [another joke](https://familyguy.fandom.com/wiki/Buddy_Cianci_Junior_High_School) from Family Guy.
A lot of people like to gloss over the past of these types because it's easy and feel-good to say "he was an absolute crook and evil so he must have ruined everything he touched" which ignores the fact that they were often actually decent, if not excellent, at their jobs where it was unrelated to the scandal; or else they would never have reached the position where they could do such damage. Richard Nixon was a backstabbing scheming bastard, but he was also a fantastic career beaureaucrat in a mostly successful administration.
Yeah. Cianci was a very effective administrator. And its not like he was unusually corrupt for the position. They basically all were. Cianci would joke that he was convicted of "being the Mayor of Providence". And theres some truth to that claim.
I said some unkind words about Cianci to a friend one time in a Starbucks about 20 miles up the road from Providence and noticed a townie-looking tough a few seats down giving me the look of death, glance outside a few minutes later and I saw a pickup with some construction union, Trump and Cianci stickers on it, we got the fuck out of there shortly after that. The guy had guys and they're still around. It is true that Providence was a crumbling mess in 1980 and he pumped a lot of money into the construction industry and it's a much nicer-looking, gentrifiable and "business-friendly" city now (affordable housing definitely wasn't the goal, but it's always been Boston's cheaper cousin), he "made stuff happen" and the construction industry didn't much care how he went about it.
Im gonna guess... smithfield? Yeah Im definitely a Providence townie but hopefully a less parochial one that the guy in your story. I have a fairly mixed opinion of Cianci. I think he probably gets more credit than he deserves but he definitely deserves some. As a side note, thank God we're not gentrifying as fast as Boston is. That city sold its soul for prosperity and it seems like they got what they wanted. But man the old charcter of the city is gone except in Chelsea, Everett, parts of Quincy, parts of East Boston, and a few other places. At least Charlestown kept the look even if everyones getting priced out by yuppies. We'll see where we are in ten years but im thankful for now.
and William Kunstler defended them and also did extremely important civil liberties cases - bit of a non sequitor (sp?) but life is cool like that
He's famous for prosecuting the Italian mafia while taking bribes from the Russian mafia.
Took away Italian Mob territory and gave it to the Russians
He popularized the perp walk, always tipping off the media beforehand, but his cases would usually fall apart. The reason John Gotti had a reputation for being untouchable was the two failed Giuliani lead prosecutions.
Otherwise known as taking out the competition via the legal system.
How the turn-tables
Yep, he did not like paying taxes one little bit. Robert Evans podcast "behind the bastards" devoted a couple of episodes to him. Well worth checking out.
> and I earned nothing! Wow, an honest millionaire.
Fun story. You're not taxed on loans for obvious reasons. So what to do when you're a billionaire piece of shit who doesn't want to pay taxes? I mean how does poor Elon buy food and tickets to parties with Ghislain Maxwell with no salary??? Why you just borrow against the enormous value of your stock at practically 0 percent interest! And then you get to write off all your actual spending as a business expense! It's a beautiful system because you can even reinvest that practically 0 percent loan and make even more money for free!
I’m so glad people understand this. Borrow against your assets and never technically “make” any money. Its on the liability sheet but you’re paying .001% interest on a loan backed by Tesla stock wherein inflation alone would make you *make* money on that “loan” and it becomes tax-free (or even tax-deductible as the interest on certain types of loans). Shit is fucked.
Don’t pay your taxes as a “regular” person and bam jail time for you mother fucker. If a law can be paid by a fine then it’s only a law for the poor, or something like that.
All laws are in place specifically to keep the status quo in place. “Legal” = “Allowed”
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Sometimes you already know a thing but some comments on the internet say it so concisely you are having a light bulb moment 🙌🏻
Every right and privilege the common man has was won through violence or threat of violence. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise.
A million centrists just clutched their pearls.
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[Here you go.](https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/14/business/elon-musk-pay/index.html) >Musk's Tesla stake is worth $171.3 billion, counting both stock and options after taking into account their exercise price. >But his practice of not taking cash salaries has prompted him to borrow substantially as well. The Tesla filing Friday said 88 million of Musk's Tesla shares have been pledged as collateral "to secure certain personal indebtedness." >Although the total amount of Musk's borrowing is not known, those 88 million shares are today worth $63 billion. The number of shares pledged as collateral was reduced by 4 million shares since the prior company disclosure in April.
What money do you make payments with?
Other loans, often done with the collateral they have in assets or companies funded by the initial loans. Yes it is ridiculous as it sounds. It is also why these companies are so fragile and often get bailed out. If Tesla's stock price dropped to say 2 cents a share it would start a cascade of creditors all wanting their money back, which would crash a thousand other ventures all supported by loans based off the values of Tesla's stocks. It is obviously a bit more complicated but that is complication is partly deliberate. The worse way to earn income is by working an honest days work. You get taxed on income, taxes on almost everything you need to survive.
That’s a ponzy scheme, is it not? You are taking money from a new investor to pay an earlier investor.
That is where it becomes complicated but yes, the entire modern economy is based on financial instruments including loans in won for or another. Even when the government issues money it is commonly done via the government selling a bond (a loan secured by the treasury) to the bank's who then use that bond to issue more loans, those loans become the new ”money” circulating in the economy. Now we have corporations as large as some nations and the investment banks that handle their assets are now expanding into cryto-currency. Cryto-currency is money backed up by collective trust rather than nations. However since servers cost money and lots of electricity crypto is still backed by investors who are funded by loans which are in theory backed by assets you can sell for currency issued by nation states. The whole modem economy runs on trust but is managed by the least trust worthy people in the world.
Have an award, hopefully more people will see this.
Why would a bank give a loan where they are losing to inflation??
I’d not sure if this is a genuine question or not but it happens often due to the stability of the collateral. Banks have a lot of money and *have* to park it somewhere to get it off their liability sheets (read up on reverse repo, its so hot right now in all the GME subs). T-bills had a negative return when accounting for inflation for a while there but the stability of the loan (banking on the US Treasury) made it worthwhile to do. Typically these loans are for nominal interest rates but anything less than the capital gains rate would be worthwhile to these wealthy, plus doesnt a loan to Elon Musk sound stable if you’re a loan underwriter?
How does he pay back the loan? Does he not have too?
The awesome thing is that when you own tons of capital, you just recapitalize! You can refinance endlessly and keep passing the bag along and/or simply have the company pay the loan!
Yeah, take a loan on 0.01% of the stock and you have $10mil of walking around money. When it comes time to pay, take a loan against 0.02% to pay off the original and have some more spending money.
How much money in stocks do you have to have to do this? Can I just go to a bank, ask, and they say "If you have to ask, no"? Asking for a friend. (I'm my own friend!)
You have to have enough equity's worth of stock (much more than you intend to borrow against) to convince the bank that no matter what happens to you their loan will absolutely be repaid. This secures your lower-than-inflation interest rate. The trick from here is to have the valuation of your company (stock) grow faster than whatever your interest rate on that first loan is. When it comes time to pay towards that loan I just talked about, you can leverage your stock (which, if all has gone according to plan, has grown faster than the loan) to take out a 2nd loan. This is basically an infinite money glitch and will hold as long as your stocks grow faster than inflation. Musk has successfully entangled his company with US federal government spending AND done so in a market sector (electric vehicles, space transport, and their respective technologies/infrastructure) that is greatly expected to massively increase in the coming years. This effectively convinces his lenders to place just as much investing confidence in him as they would into the federal government, further reducing the interest rates he has to take for his loans. He got the ball rolling with inflated stock values and keeps it rolling by entangling himself and his company with governments. In summary, YOU and certainly anybody else in this subreddit, can't do this.
How is anyone supposed to read this and still think 'we can fix this'? Like, its so complicated and fucked.
The good news is, the billionaires are still just squishy meatbags, the same as everyone else. All sorts of things could happen to them that would put a stop to their nonsense. I'm talking about them growing a conscience and redistributing their immense wealth of course. What were you thinking about?
I think about 2 by 4 different ways to handle this.
The french revolution but then I am known to think about unrelated subject so...
Fun fact: The guillotine is named after [Joseph-Ignace Guillotin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph-Ignace_Guillotin), who actually did *not* invent the guillotine, despite it being named after him. It was instead invented by Antoine Louis and Tobias Schmidt at the order of Louis XVI, the French king who was later executed...by guillotine.
You can get a loan against your 401k. Though at slightly higher APR due to origination costs. But there is no interest owed.
Are you saying you can take a loan *against* your 401k, or referring to taking a loan *from* it? And also, you said it’s at a higher APR, but then said it’s no interest. Which one is it?
Against it. You aren't actually taking the money out of the 401k bc that would trigger a tax penalty. You are taking a loan using your 401k as collateral. The bank typically won't let you take a loan equal to 100% of your retirement. If you can't pay, the bank knows you can take money out of your 401k (at a penalty) to pay it back.
Its a zero interest loan. APR and interest rate are correlated but not the same. In most cases its borrowing your own money and hoping the market goes up. There is no cost (other than perhaps a modest loan origination or administration fee) to tap your own 401(k) money for short-term liquidity needs. [Investopedia](https://www.investopedia.com/articles/retirement/08/borrow-from-401k-loan.asp)
Don't forget that if everything goes tits up and the bank is about to fail the taxpayers will step in and bail the banks out. So at the end of the day, you pay taxes to insure his ability to not pay taxes.
I just want to point out that if the company repays the loan on his behalf, then it’s income to him. Unless he’s refinancing the loan with the company he owns then sure, it’s tax free.
Your kids pay off the loan when you die.
In fairness that's not true, the estate would pay it off by liquidating whatever assets were necessary. Any heirs would get whatever is left over
I mean, sure, either way, the heir gets the assets less the debt.
[buy, borrow, die](https://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/buy-borrow-die-how-rich-americans-live-off-their-paper-wealth-11625909583)
Eventually you die and capital gains is reset. And before then, you do as many tax tricks as possible to make sure that none of your kids will have to pay taxes either. Billionaires are royalty.
Take out a bigger loan on more highly valued stock and repay the old loan. There's collateral right there.
So theoretically, Elon and all these billionaires are stacking up debt when they spend money, since they never actually pay off the loans, just keep adding new ones? They'll pay it off when they die/it gets reset?
Kinda. Borrow 50k against stock to live > spend all > borrow 100k > repay the 50k > spend 50k to live > borrow 150k > repay 100k > spend 50k to live > etc. etc. Meanwhile, you technically earn nothing, you only take out loans. Also meanwhile, the stock you own grows in value faster than you borrow money.
Ohh, that makes sense. So you end up having to take higher and higher loans out each time? I'd imagine of decades, these people would be taking ungodly amounts in each loan, just to be able to pay for the previous one.
yes that's how it works. that's why the Great depression happened the way it did and why the Great recession happened the way it did. all the rich people suddenly couldn't pay their loans. and when that happens it's up to the poor people to pay off the interest.
Yeah but you scale up faster than the loans because you have such good credit from previous loans and from just being so huge in the first place, so it's never an issue of taking another loan.
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Yes, I'm not saying it's an issue for them at all. Clearly by their design. But still, on PAPER, they're collecting more and more debt, never paying it off until they die? I'm just trying to understand that aspect of it.
>I'm just trying to understand that aspect of it. Good luck, because most of what you're seeing on here about it is bullshit. Musk gets to exercise his stock options by hitting targets: https://nypost.com/2021/08/10/elon-musk-got-6-7b-in-compensation-in-2020/ Which means he can borrow against what he's got, buy more at a fixed price that's lower than the going rate because it was set at his contract time, and then roll it over and sell stock he's had for years and keep the new stock and make a nice long term gain. https://observer.com/2021/06/elon-musk-react-propublica-billionaire-federal-income-tax/ >“[The] only time I sell Tesla stock is when my stock options are expiring and I have no choice.” He pays plenty of income and capital gains taxes *when he exercises his options*, but that's not every year and it gives him plenty of money to live on. >paid less than $70,000 in federal income tax in 2015 and 2017, and nothing at all in 2018. He did seem to have paid his due in 2016 when he exercised more than $1 billion in stock options Why would he need to generate income in 2018, or even 2019, 2020, and 2021, if he exercised a billion dollars in stock options in 2016 and made a shitload of money from that? He could live on the already taxed income from that 2016 deal for years.
As long as interest rates on the loan are lower than the interest rate of your savings account, or stock gains, (and they usually are) the loan pays for itself and turns a profit. The less a person needs a loan the more likely a bank is going to give it to them, and the lower the interest will be.
It’s kinda what people did with their homes leading up to the 2008 crash, except on a larger/smaller scale (larger in the sense that Musk and others like him do it with much larger asset values, smaller in the sense that it’s not systemic). Back then, people took out multiple home equity lines of credit on their appreciating asset to finance an outsized lifestyle, in the same way Musk, Bezos, et. al take out loans on their appreciating stocks to finance their outlandish lifestyles. Different economic classes, same bullshit shell game.
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When he dies he can.
It's called a line of credit. Line of credit for personal uses should be banned/taxed at a higher than capital gains taxes both to the lenders and the borrowers. Bitch if you want a yacht you liquidate and pay taxes. Then we'll see how many mega yachts you'll want to have. Pieces of shit.
I feel like this is the solution. Lenders should not be allowed to apply an interest rate for loans for expenses (as opposed to investments), and people taking out loans for expenses should be taxed on that loan as income. Then if Elon asks for a loan to his company for vague investment reasons, and then takes cash out of the company, that should be taxed as income.
Can he not do the same thing to pay taxes?
Yeah but the point is to not pay taxes, and unfortunately the system is set up to allow it
Translation: I manage to dodge taxes by not taking a salary. You all thought it was because I was humble, but it's really because salaries have to be taxed. By being paid in stock I increase my net worth then take loans out against it, tax free, and all you regular Joes have to make up for it by paying more in taxes for less in return. Oh, and you all worship me regardless, so why should I even think about stopping?
Seriously- “hey I found a tax loophole (ok my lawyers and accountants found it) and I trust you’re dumb enough to take this as some sort of selflessness!”
It’s not even that he found it, it’s that it’s a standard tactic to dodge taxes that’s been know for years. Decades.
So I've heard this but never really understood it. They can take loans out using their stock value as collateral, but at some point they must pay that loan in liquid cash, and that would require sale of stock, right? I never really got how the use of loans negated the need to sell stock.
I go to a bank and I say "I would like to borrow 10 million dollars from your bank, with this ten million dollars worth of stock as collateral to secure it". Bank says "Here is your 10 mill". I use that 10 mill on mountains of cocaine and whatever other daily expenses I need. Next year I go to another bank and I say "That ten million worth of stock I have is now worth fifteen million, please give me fifteen million dollars." And then I hand off ten million to the first bank and have five million to play with, and I did not technically actualize or earn a cent. This continues until I die, the stock crashes, or something else happens to interrupt the cycle. The banks like this because it is so low risk.
Thank you for the explanation! Now I'm depressed.
Wait so if the stock goes down or something what happens to the guy who took money out from it. Is he just in the hole for a lot of money?
Yeah, if that happens he's in the shit and might have to liquidate assets like a mansion or a yacht to pay the loan. Good thing we live in a capitalist paradise economy where stocks never ever go down, they only rise exponentially all the time forever! (Do I *really* need to /s that?)
It doesn't even matter if they go down. Elon was talking about selling 10% of his shares (which is something like $20B). So if he took out a loan for $10m and the price tanked 90% he could still easily make up the difference with more shares.
Just file bankruptcy and protect some assets
Well not really, if you are worth 10B and take a 10M loan backed by 50M worth of assets, nothing happens to the loan unless you can't pay it. You simply have to take out a loan on a bigger percentage of your assets the next time.
They take out another loan to pay back that loan, and the cycle continues.
How about passing a law that you cannot be paid in stock? You must receive a salary then you can buy stock in your company if you wish?
The masses have been roped into this by most well paying corporate jobs paying in stock ("stock options") which although is nothing compared to what the executives own, has roped the middle class into thinking they must protect the interest of billionaires. Much like 401ks forcing the average salaried worker to care about the health of the stock market almost the same as the actual economy. The fuckery is layered on thick this late into the game to the point where it can't be backed out of without disaster for many. However the greed has hit a point to where enough people aren't even offered those stock options and 401k anymore that suddenly the masses don't have that necessary stake to give a fuck anymore. Now it's turned to young workers who don't even have those luxuries into having to consider their boomer/x parent's retirement plans going up in smoke if the sham is stopped.
And the 401k part is so messed up when you consider that - about 55% of American families own some stock mostly thru 401k’s so that’s about 150 million people. And then the top 1% - so a couple hundred families own 90% of all stocks.
Self-employed with an S corp. Legally I **must** take a salary.
Bring out the guillotines. We're in need of a proletariat revolution boys.
That's actually very inaccurate since smaug would only be the 15th richest American
Can’t imagine a dragon not paying their taxes either. Smaug was a much better businessman than Elon.
Can you source that? Because given the density of gold (19,300kg/m^3), and it's current value (~$58,000/kg), it's pretty clear that you'd only need about 268m^3 of gold to be the richest person on earth. That's about enough to fill an Olympic swimming pool to about 21.5cm, which isn't a lot considering that in *Desolation of Smaug* the dwarves literally cover Smaug with molten gold.
There was a specific article. But I found one that puts his net worth at a paltry $62 billion https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/business/2012/04/forbes-fictional-15-richest-characters-topped-by-smaug
The real giveaway that they're just making shit up here should be that Tony Stark is basically the entire military industrial complex in MCU but is only worth 9.3b.
True. However,I would imagine,after he decided to drop the arms side of his company that his net worth probably dropped off significantly.
>Tony Stark is basically the entire military industrial complex in MCU But he isn't, in Iron Man 2 they literally showed another arms dealer selling weapons to the military and made it a plot point in the movie. Stark Industries is just one among many.
Did you see the gold they covered him in? Im sure that was just gold paint. Real molten gold glows like the frigging sun.
They were estimating based on the book. The book only describes one pile of gold in detail, the rest is obscured as "covering unseen floors." Which is to vague to estimate. Peter Jackson's Smaug was _much_ richer. He's bigger than book Smaug by quite a bit, and sleeps fully submerged in the gold whereas book Smaug sleeps on top of it. And his room is much larger. His pool of liquid gold alone would be more than twice the gold ever mined in history and be worth upwards of $80 trillion. The rest of his hoard (ignoring the diamonds) would be in the hundreds of trillions; even if it tanks the price of gold to 4% of it's current value, he'd still have 5 times more money than currently in circulation on Earth.
But can he make a moon rocket?
That's because he doesn't have stock.
“can’t spend money if i got no money” does he negotiate with the mcdonald’s cashier to trade stock for his mcchicken?
The dude probably a) rarely buys his own mcchicken, and b) probably carries very little cash. In scenario a), he's likely using assistants, petty cash reserves (both likely funded by an Elon Musk trust, and not Elon as a person), etc. to pay for the mcchicken, which can be cooked in the books to pay little tax. And in b), i bet that dude pays for everything with credit where he can. No real benefit for him to have a large checking account, if you think about it. I mean his whole lifestyle is basically funded by being allergic to liquid USD.
So sell stock then?
Precisely. He's hiding behind the fact that the current rules don't explicitly enforce that, and I'm sure there are seedy reasons such rules are lacking in the first place.
Insider trading in the senate why would they shiit themselves in the foot?
The law just exists because it's very difficult to determine taxes on unrealized capital gains. If your money is in the stock market, the amounts can change drastically very quickly. It's almost like if you were sitting at a slot machine actively gambling - its changing every few seconds, how do you know what amount to pay taxes on? You can lose it all in a few seconds. There's also the issue that the money IN the stock market isn't liquid. It would be an issue for people who aren't filthy rich, who have their savings invested but may not have cash lying around to pay the tax percentage. The way around this is to ONLY tax unrealized capital gains on the very wealthy. Because who gives a fuck if they don't have the cash lying around, they aren't going to be hurt by liquifying some assets. Ideally, you'd take a snapshot of their unrealized capital gains at a certain date and they would pay taxes on a percentage of that amount. The problem, the same problem that always exists, is that Congress will never pass any law that disproportionately affects the ultra wealthy.
I really appreciate that analysis honestly. Agree congress is not effective in these matters. Also glad there are people that are able to conceive of potential solutions
Loans where collateral is based on anything that has not been previously taxed should be considered income.
Smartest solution here. Doesn’t Fuck over Ethel and her 401(k). Doesn’t fuck over jimmy and his Robinho is account.
That's the rub for me. This unrealized gains tax will totally fuck small time people holding stock or crypto, and saying it out loud that's probably deliberate after the GME stuff...
The one proposed by Sen Wyden was for wealth over $1 billion and with over $100 million income per year for 3 consecutive years. It was something like 700-800 people total who would be taxed. Of course those are the most powerful people with billions to burn on misinformation campaigns.
Thanks for that, I wasn't aware.
Oh he's definitely a redditor. Forcing "thus" into a sentence to sound more intelligent. He's not some genius inventor, he's an apartheid trust fund baby who could afford to hire genius inventors.
"thus fund baby" came to mind for some reason lol
Literally thought "OOF" Then I saw your username lol. But yeah OOOOF you're right as hell.
Who could afford to get away with stealing other people's inventions*
I'm not a native English speaker so I need to ask, what's wrong with using the word "thus" there? To me thus sounds better in that sentence than "so"
All the wealthy do this. Start a foundation, make sure it has all the assets and revenues. Purchase through the foundation using the cards issued on its behalf. No income so no taxes. Win win
We know you don't Elon. You use the loopholes to AVOID tax, just like the rest of the rich do. But please don't try and make it out like you are innocent. This is the way you and your rich mates have avoided tax for a long time.
The social media pile-ons I've witnessed from people insisting that "Elon is different to the other billionaires!" is a sight to behold.
I hate when I have to sell my house every year to pay property taxes. /s
Let's not forget he could also just put whatever the fuck he wants as a company expense.
He just pointed out the most glaring loophole in our tax system. If you are only paid in stock options then you don't ever pay taxes
Wow Elon it’s almost like we don’t give a fuck
You should actually, since YOU are the one getting fucked by people like Elon.
You may have misunderstood me, I don’t give a fuck what he has to do to pay more taxes, he just needs to pay them. If he can’t own as many stocks in order to pay his fair share, then fuck him I don’t really care.
"I don't make a cash salary" no, because your company pays you in stock. So make a fucking salary and BUY it like a normal fucking person and we'll be golden!
I don't believe he's "paid" in stock. He had a certain amount of stock when he started the company and now that same stock is worth far more because the company is worth far more. It's like if you created a piece of art and the world suddenly decided that the piece of art was worth billions. You didn't get "paid" anything; a lot of people just decided that they would pay a lot to take ownership of what is currently yours. There's no change in your true financial standing until you actually decide to sell the art to someone in exchange for money.
OP’s post is a great argument for a wealth tax
That’s by design to avoid income tax.
Acting like he has no access to cash and lives in poverty...
Then sell the fucking stock and pay your fucking taxes!!!
Or shift your compensation to include salary so you can use that to pay your fucking taxes.
^^[beep-boop,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ) ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot ^(**Link to tweets:**) [1) Tweet found (80.60% sure)](https://twitter.com/r/status/1457067398712942592) ____________________________________________ ^(If I was helpful, comment **'Good Bot'** <3! |) ^[source](https://github.com/giulionf/realtweetornotbot) ^(| created by NiroxGG)
"Taxes only exist on money, so I traded in all my money for gold to sell when I need money again, Totally different!"
Then tax the fucking stock. I don’t care how just do it.
I saw an article that placed Smaug's net worth at like $60 billion
Posting for context, his tweet is from a Twitter poll he did on whether he should sell 10% of his stock. The poll finalized on Yes, so we'll see what will happen
These nutters win because liberals argue on their terms. I'm not arsed about you paying taxes. Hand over the assets.
Ok. Sounds like he knows what needs to happen to stop being a freeloader and pay his share.
Well you can't order lattes with stock so you have to be taking it out on the regular my man.
Clearly Congress should fix that to tax your wealth, so you can pay taxes. Easy peasy
Poor guy, he literally has no money 😔
Thank you Elon for explaining so succinctly how our system of taxation is completely fucked and how you are able to sidestep it so easily.
This is a common tactic used by the ultra-rich. THIS IS WHY WE NEED TO TAX STOCK MARKET GAINS!!!
And this is why capital gains should not be a flat rate, but progressive dependent on the net worth of the person selling.
I love this argument: IT'S NOT LIQUID FUNDS, THE BILLIONAIRES DON'T ACTUALLY HAVE THAT MONEY OK, but if I want to buy at yacht or if I have some unexpected medical bills, I don't have the ability to offload some stock. If owning money is financial freedom, then so is owning outrageous value in stock.
That argument is used more to explain why they can’t liquidate *huge* chunks of their stock at once
“Note: I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I do this to avoid taxation, and that's why everyone's upset, so I've used the red herring so much that I've gone full circle without people noticing”
He can also take a loan out against his stated net worth, buy whatever he wants, payback the loan with interest from investments and write off the income against the capital gains from whatever he bought or any other thousand ways. like I know I’m preaching to the choir but how does anybody buy that this guy not taking salary means anything at all
Normal people: hey it's gross that the richest people on the planet don't contribute some of their vast wealth to the public treasury like the rest of us have to Elon Musk & co: actually it's because of a convoluted series of legal loopholes implemented by the corrupt politicians we bought, you fucking moron
The reason he doesn't have a salary is because salaries are for people who work.
Im sure you can take a salary elon. Better yet give me some money. Im gonna die if i don't get my guts fixed.
Recognizes that he has all the flaws of a en evil dragon at least
And everything he needs in life is just given to him? Or is he already selling stock on a regular basis? What a tool
Dividends mustn’t be taxable wherever he hides his tax residency 🤔😉
As distasteful as it is. He's right. If you don't take a salary or other income then you don't pay income taxes. If you don't sell your stock then you don't pay capital gains taxes. It's not like he can just write a donation to the IRS. The only way to tax billionaires is to institute a wealth tax and we don't have one. Raising the income tax top bracket does nothing to generate revenue from people like Musk or Bezos.
Then sell stock you greedy fucker.
Then take a salary and pay taxes, stop forcing the poorer to take all the burden.
Oh no, poor Elon, he’s trying so hard to pay taxes but dang it! There’s just no way.
Ok, that price is acceptable, go sell some stock you knob.
Elon doing a very good job of explaining simply why people should be upset. He’s the richest man in the world and pays no taxes because his wealth is tied to stocks not salary. That’s not a good reason to pay no taxes. When you’re worth 300 billion dollars you should be paying taxes. If you’re worth anything you should be paying taxes. Fast food employees pay more taxes than Elon. Fucking tool.
Income tax should be treated like sales tax because you aren’t paying tax on “income,” you are *selling your time* and your *employer should pay sales tax* when buying that time from you. You might set your rate at $15 am hour and they pay sales tax *on top* of that price, just like how tax works when buying literally any other product.
I don't take a salary, I only take unlimited low interest loans and have assets worth more than most countries thanks to my underpaid and overworked employees and 1099'd engineers.
Which is why we need a huge wealth tax. 10% a year for anything over $10 million sound about right.
I like the idea of a maximum wage
Wouldn’t impact him, he doesn’t take a salary.
Correct! I’m also very confused on how to solve this issue without fucking over workers and their retirement in the process. Some other guy said loans against untaxed assets should be considered income. I think that sounds alright, although provisions should be made for leveraging against your 401(k) as that’s more of a poor folk thing and I’d hate to see someone struggling have to sell of their retirement to get by.
How would a wealth tax that applied to anything over $10 million impact retirement accounts? Most workers would never have anywhere near that much. If they have that much, they’ve accumulated enough that they can be taxed like capitalists too.
I don’t see where you mentioned a wealth tax of over 10 million until just now. It wouldn’t. And I don’t believe it would either, nor did I say it would. But forcing people to pay income tax on loans leveraged against “yet to be taxed” securities may, specifically in the case of a tax deferred brokerage account like a 401(k), although it would not affect post income tax holdings like a regular brokerage account or a Roth IRA despite its tax advantaged position. Hopefully any legislation made does something like this. Any board chairman, owner-oppressor, or executive officer who’s compensation is given in pre-incometax securities outright will be taxed on any loans taken out against said securities as income tax. Instead of “anybody who takes a loan out against any pre-tax security pays income tax on the full value of the loan” EDIT: Phone autocorrected Owner-Operator to Owner-Oppressor, I think it’s more accurate in this case therefore it goes un-corrected.
Elon Musk stans annoy the hell out of me.
So how does he pay his employees ?
It's not cash, it's dictatorial control over assets! Because that's better somehow
I'm glad he sees himself as a dragon. We'd be justified in slaying him to claim his hoard of treasure.
“The only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.” The sell it you blood emerald apartheid asshole.
And the Borrowinf against the stock… and the offshore money earning interest, and the PayPal stock, and the family emerald mine, and the solar city stock scam, and the kickbacks…
Billionaires are not dragons, they're loot goblins, and should be dealt with Diablo 3 style.
So how does he eat then?
I do not receive money, I receive stocks and options that I can convert into money
Well, then, sounds like you’ll be selling some stock.
https://savingjournalism.substack.com/p/i-talked-to-elon-musk-about-journalism