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Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

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Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla's a crypto company. 25% of Tesla's earnings last quarter were crypto: https://cointelegraph.com/news/tesla-600-million-bitcoin-gai...

That's multiple years of increase being accounted for all at once.

So you're saying 25% of Tesla's earnings last quarter wasn't even earned last quarter and wasn't related to anything Tesla as business did?

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every car that is sold retires an old one. And the one it retires will be the least valuable. This happens becauase the person who buys a new car sells their old one to someone else, who sells their old one to someone else, and so on down the chain. The oldest cars from America go to other cheaper markets replacing the cars in use there.

>Every car that is sold retires an old one. I'm about to purchase my first car, a Tesla! Whose vehicle will be retired by my purchase?

[deleted]

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#163

I wish this article was written with a less biased tone. I'm genuinely interested in understanding it better. As far as I can tell, the article cites two things: $500M tax savings by using an accelerated depreciation schedule (unclear if they saved $500M more by using accelerated vs a regular depreciation schedule, but I assume no) and they claimed $300M in tax credits. The article doesn't address the other $1.5B, pr…

Simpler alternative to figuring out the accounting tricks and 1-year deferred taxes: Amortizing their earnings and taxes for the past ~5 years.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#164
post #15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world is a massively profitable company paying almost nothing in taxes polarizing?

You have to come into the article believing a ton of things: 1. Tax credits are illegitimate 2. Accelerated depreciation is illegitimate 3. Ownership of productive companies is "hoarding wealth" 4. Journalism is in a battle with the current administration 5. Paying taxes is a good thing If you _don't_ buy into these premises, for which there is no argument given for or against, you'll be tilted against the author. If…

I don't believe those things and still don't disagree with the author. Because the article is too devoid of real information for me to have an opinion on this.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It amounts to the same thing, no?

Definitely not, no. Credits on profits incentivize short term profit taking, while credits in products incentivize number of units shipped. The second is much better for society. Think about it from the perspective of a company deciding between selling low margin cheap EVs in the short term before process efficiencies kick in, or selling expensive EVs now.

It isn't a tax credit for making profits. It's a tax credit for making EVs. The reason there are credits for both consumers and manufacturers is that the manufacturer credits provide an incentive to build EV factories in the US, even if some of the cars are for export.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#166
post #58
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what world is a massively profitable company paying almost nothing in taxes polarizing?

At least among economists it is not that polarizing. Most agree we should get rid of corporate tax. [0] In reality a corporation cannot pay taxes any more than a table can. Only people can pay taxes. So who pays the corporate tax? It must come from the corporation's consumers, employees, or shareholders (or some combination thereof). Raising the corporate tax is just a sneaky way of raising tax on one or more of thos…

A corporation can't pay taxes? But they do.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's multiple years of increase being accounted for all at once.

So you're saying 25% of Tesla's earnings last quarter wasn't even earned last quarter and wasn't related to anything Tesla as business did?

Yeah, pretty much. The value increase of Tesla's bitcoins since 2021/2022 was being ignored for accounting purposes until just now.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#168

I wish this article was written with a less biased tone. I'm genuinely interested in understanding it better. As far as I can tell, the article cites two things: $500M tax savings by using an accelerated depreciation schedule (unclear if they saved $500M more by using accelerated vs a regular depreciation schedule, but I assume no) and they claimed $300M in tax credits. The article doesn't address the other $1.5B, pr…

> Tax credits seem to make sense for an EV company? That's one of the things that I've found odd. A lot of people that very strongly support things like tax credits for EV cars, in order to fight climate change, will then turn around and talk about how terrible they are when they're actually used, such as in the article here. A lot of times people don't seem to have a consistent view of what they actually want, and w…

I'd imagine that they are different people. Arguing with crowds can be a bit frustrating because the crowd will argue strongly in favour of something, then the winds shift and the crowd argues strongly against it without anyone really changing their minds. Ditto strongly believing contradictory things.

If we want to talk specifically about social media sites like HN, the conversation is really steered by the up/down votes rather than the people in the threads. Every possible perspective tends to get a comment then the gestalt decides which ones they like. The upvoters anonymous and the downvoters are often ... a weird crew with motives that are often hard to divine.

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about simply the principle: 1. I should be able to deduct the same sorts of things from my individual income that corporations routinely deduct from their income. If a corporation can legally shield all of their income from taxes, why can't I shield all of my income from taxes? Corporations can deduct the costs of all the things they have to do to make money and do weird depreciation tricks, but I cannot deduct t…

This is one of the most galling things you realize when you start doing business taxes. If individuals were able to deduct expenses necessary to earn income like businesses do, that would include most meals, full cost of housing (not just mortgage interest), most utilities, vehicles [0], etc. And there would be no "standard deduction" to clear, either. [0] official IRS policy is that "commuting" expenses are not dedu…

Didn't the Nortel CEO in the 90's get an allowance from the company for all that personal stuff?

Re: Tesla Paid Zero Federal Income Tax in 2024, Despite $2.3B in Income

#170
post #30

You know what’s ironic is that Tesla survived because of Obama era subsidies. They were desperate to get one private enterprise to succeed because so many solar and other “clean” energy private ventures failed during that period. So, in my view, Obama created Elon. Now the rest of America has to deal with it in addition to the abject failure that is PPACA which ballooned US healthcare costs (not that Republicans have…

Obama didn't make the Grifter, the grifter has a long history of grifting.
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