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Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

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Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#141

Post by Consultant32452 »

ww520 wrote: post #41
tdehollain wrote: post #13

That's $593M taxes on $1.34B earnings on exercising stock options...44% tax rate is pretty harsh!

44% tax rate is not too bad. Note that people with lots of money got their money by leveraging the system. A well run system is not cheap. The court system, the legal system, law enforcement, the education system, welfare, defense, etc all cost money. The higher percentage tax is only fair to pay back to the system that generates the big gain.

I think there's a big flaw in this argument, because it doesn't get applied universally. In my opinion people who would have starved to death or died from some medical problem except that the government stepped in and took care of them gained far more than Musk did. I'm not saying I know what Musk's tax rate should be, but the argument that it's somehow related to the benefits provided to him by government seems spurious. If that were the case then surely you'd support a pay-as-you go funding plan for all government services, right?

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#142

Post by Maarten88 »

BeetleB wrote: post #139
Maarten88 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair. For the US, the top 1% seems to own 40% of all wealth, a little bit less but still a staggering number i.m.o. My problem with this is not so much the wealth of the top 1% in itself, but the lack of equal opportunity in the bottom 50%. A child that is born in this demography has much, much lower chance on a successful life than a child that is born in a wealthy family. That simply can't be fair. https://en.wikip…

>That simply can't be fair. This word "fair" keeps being thrown about in these discussions. All such discussions are useless unless the people involved specify what they mean by "fair". And I'll give you a hint: You'll find many people will disagree with your definition (and there isn't consensus on any one definition). A simple example: Fairness in equality vs fairness in proportion. The former is about everyone hav…

Fairness means getting what one deserves.

The world is unfair in many ways, and I thought I was quite specific in my example of this by comparing two baby's: one born with top 1% wealthy parents, and another one born in the bottom 50% income parents. The baby's have done nothing in their lives yet and are equally talented, yet one of them will almost certainly have a much better life.

Unless you want to argue that the rich baby somehow deserves more, I think it's better to assume she was just lucky being born rich. And this luck will extend throughout childhood: positive environment, more friends, better care, better schools, etc.

You are right that this still does not make it unfair. This is all luck. But what would be unfair is when the rich kid gets to inherit all of the wealth, and not pay a disproportionate part of that wealth toward taxes that are needed to pay for the poor kids' education and healthcare, to give her at least some chance to grab an opportunity and work herself to a somewhat better life.

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#143

Post by paulddraper »

omginternets wrote: post #32
user5994461 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that you are a GAFA CEO 2 years before you IPO and you are asked to pay 593 millions based on the estimated value of your shares.

Yes, and? Am I supposed to feel sorry for people with hundreds of millions in liquid assets?

Absolutely not.

Stick to "Justice for Most"

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#144

Post by MicroBerto »

ska wrote: post #49
MicroBerto wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's always interesting to see the opinions of different cultures about how much tax is reasonable :) Realize none of these numbers include the local, county, state, sales, and property taxes he pays. At some point, theft becomes a more suitable word for it.

At some point, theft becomes a more suitable word for it. No, because confounding usefully distinct concepts makes them less useful.

If Taxation at 100% is slavery, at what percentage is it not?

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#145

Post by youdontknowtho »

youdontknowtho wrote: post #73

I personally think that after the first 1.5 million that they tax rate should be 100%. That's still an incredibly large amount of money. After that we need the resources to tackle problems and we can't if people hoard them. I know that it sounds simple, and lots of people on this site will disagree, but I'm having trouble justifying this kind of extreme wealth to myself anymore. There are so many people in poverty an…

Wow. Lots of down votes...I'm shocked.

Assholes.

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#146

Post by nojvek »

koreyb wrote: post #118
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially if you take into consideration how much Musk has personally benefitted from a well funded government. >Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...

Here is a good breakdown of that $4.9bn number https://electrek.co/2015/06/02/complete-breakdown-of-the-4-9... Incentives for creating jobs & tax credits. Not bad compared to the $12 billion cost for the GM bailout and $4 billion+/yr for oil & gas subsidies.

If you look at money invested, govt should have let GM go under the bus. Bailouts aren't a great long term fix. They just encourage shitty management

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#147

Post by areyousure »

tunesmith wrote: post #21
tdehollain wrote: post #13

That's $593M taxes on $1.34B earnings on exercising stock options...44% tax rate is pretty harsh!

I got interested in the utility of money a while back and how the "value" of money is roughly logarithmic as it goes up. I found a couple of thought experiments regarding a "logarithmic flat tax". Anyway, going by that I think it's about right - it might still be a little bit high, though. Depending on how you calculate it those plans can be configured so that he should have paid more in the 35-40% range. Basically,…

Can you add a little detail, perhaps a formula?

Do you mean that if someone earns R, they pay $C*log10(R/P), where P is some poverty level for them and C is a constant around 9?

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#148

Post by BeetleB »

Maarten88 wrote: post #142
BeetleB wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That simply can't be fair. This word "fair" keeps being thrown about in these discussions. All such discussions are useless unless the people involved specify what they mean by "fair". And I'll give you a hint: You'll find many people will disagree with your definition (and there isn't consensus on any one definition). A simple example: Fairness in equality vs fairness in proportion. The former is about everyone hav…

Fairness means getting what one deserves. The world is unfair in many ways, and I thought I was quite specific in my example of this by comparing two baby's: one born with top 1% wealthy parents, and another one born in the bottom 50% income parents. The baby's have done nothing in their lives yet and are equally talented, yet one of them will almost certainly have a much better life. Unless you want to argue that th…

>Fairness means getting what one deserves.

Merely begging the question. You might as well say "fairness means doing the right thing."

In your comment, you've use the word fair/unfair, but still not specified a proper criterion.

If you want to say baby's born to the lowest percentile should have the same opportunities as those in the top, that's a concrete statement (measurable, etc). Why do you have to bring the word "fair" into it?

Incidentally (and off the topic of fairness), there are easy ways to solve the problem - but those are ways no one (including, I'm sure, you) would accept. So looking at one criterion in a vacuum with the rest of society is problematic.

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#149

Post by tunesmith »

areyousure wrote: post #147
tunesmith wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got interested in the utility of money a while back and how the "value" of money is roughly logarithmic as it goes up. I found a couple of thought experiments regarding a "logarithmic flat tax". Anyway, going by that I think it's about right - it might still be a little bit high, though. Depending on how you calculate it those plans can be configured so that he should have paid more in the 35-40% range. Basically,…

Can you add a little detail, perhaps a formula? Do you mean that if someone earns R, they pay $C*log10(R/P), where P is some poverty level for them and C is a constant around 9?

Yeah. It's a bit simple - like, we're not going down to infinite negative income tax for people below poverty, just assume zero tax paid for them.

To find C, you have to sum up the log10(R/P) for everyone (including corporations) in the nation and divide that into what the government needs. There's various ways to calculate what the government needs, perhaps you separate FICA and payroll tax income entirely if you keep that, or perhaps you just look at entire Federal spending, I believe around 3.8 trillion.

But to sum up the log10(R/P), you need income distribution data. Someone else did that very roughly with a spreadsheet, I haven't tried it myself. A few years ago when they did that, they figured 3.7 trillion for spending, and C was something like 8.86.

C would also be a bit higher if you were also trying to pay down the debt over a period of time.

Re: Tesla's Musk Paid at Least $593M in Income Taxes in 2016

#150

Post by areyousure »

tunesmith wrote: post #149
areyousure wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you add a little detail, perhaps a formula? Do you mean that if someone earns R, they pay $C*log10(R/P), where P is some poverty level for them and C is a constant around 9?

Yeah. It's a bit simple - like, we're not going down to infinite negative income tax for people below poverty, just assume zero tax paid for them. To find C, you have to sum up the log10(R/P) for everyone (including corporations) in the nation and divide that into what the government needs. There's various ways to calculate what the government needs, perhaps you separate FICA and payroll tax income entirely if you ke…

Unfortunately, I don't understand the logic behind this. I would have thought that a flat tax in terms of utility would solve for the amount of taxes T in log10(R/P) - log10((R-T)/P) = C for some constant C across the population. That would correspond to taxing everyone an equal amount of utility, assuming a logarithmic model of utility.

If the tax itself is proportional to the utility function, that has the effect of taking much less utility from people with greater R. I'm also unclear on how your C works out. The largest company in the world makes less than $1 trillion per year, so even if P is $1, log10(R/P) is bounded above by 12. Given a US budget of several trillion USD, that seems to make C multiple orders of magnitude bigger.

Sorry if I'm missing something. That was my original reason for asking for a formula above.

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