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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

#261

Post by sudosysgen »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #240
johnnyanmac wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're just circling back to the GP's last comment, without refuting that comment. >Credits on profits incentivize short term profit taking, while credits in products incentivize number of units shipped. The second is much better for society.

There aren't credits on profits. There are credits for making EVs (which the manufacturers get) and for buying EVs (which the customers get).

They are, by definition, credits on profits made from selling EVs, and not from selling EVs. If Tesla made EVs without making a profit they wouldn't have received a penny.

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

#262

Post by Dylan16807 »

iforgot22 wrote: post #254
Dylan16807 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something is wrong with the tax law if this is an accounting trick that only a few companies can use effectively, which I suspect it is. Yes only a few companies could use this, but the main factor here is not really a trick. Any other company that sells electric cars and has 0-3% profit could do the same thing. If you get a small tax credit per sale, and your taxes are 21% of 3% of your sales revenue, and that mak…

I was referring to the advanced depreciation, not the EV tax credits. Tesla's profit margin is more than 3%. Per the calculations someone else did here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42893563 Tesla supposedly got $300M in tax credits, which is much less than 21% of their profit.

> I was referring to the advanced depreciation, not the EV tax credits.

The advanced depreciation only knocked out .5 billion from the 2.3 billion, and they'll have less depreciation in the next few years because of it. I'm not very worried about that being an exploit.

> Tesla's profit margin is more than 3%.

2.3 billion out of 97.7 billion revenue is less than 3 percent.

But another page is saying 2.3 billion is from the quarter, not the entire year? Then that changes the math some and you can counterbalance a bigger single digit profit with those credits. But if your actual worry is the depreciation then it's not worth analyzing this much further.

> Tesla supposedly got $300M in tax credits, which is much less than 21% of their profit.

It's not much less, it's a little bit off but we're using very rounded numbers to start with. When all the numbers are rounded to the nearest .1B, the napkin math being off by 78M just gets a shrug from me.

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

#263

Post by smsm42 »

dhc02 wrote: post #69
gonzobonzo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 may be the only one, but I was under the impression this whole time that all EV tax credits were for consumers who buy EVs, not companies who sell them.

Those are different credits. There are (if they didn't expire yet, don't remember) federal tax credits for buyers, but separate system is for manufacturers where if you make cars, you need to make some of them EV, or buy credits from somebody who does (e.g. Tesla).

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

#264

Post by smsm42 »

> Advocates for fairer taxation have said that, due to the way that tax law is written and enforced, it is essentially optional for Musk and other billionaires to follow tax guidelines

What kind of bullshit is this? If Musk didn't follow the "guidelines" (i.e. laws, there are no "guidelines" when taxes are concerned, there are laws), why won't you point out where he doesn't and provide evidence? If he does follow the laws, but you don't like what these laws allow him to do (which is a legitimate opinion, of course), then don't tell "it's optional for him to follow tax guidelines" - he follows the guidelines, that is, laws, it's just that the laws, in your opinion, need to be changed. Don't vaguely accuse people in being criminals without any evidence of any crime.

Then in the ending blurb they are vaguely implying Trump is somehow threatening their lives, without again providing any evidence. I suspect this source is not at all trustworthy and is worried more about raising money on sensationalized clickbait than informing people.

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

#265

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sudosysgen wrote: post #261
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There aren't credits on profits. There are credits for making EVs (which the manufacturers get) and for buying EVs (which the customers get).

They are, by definition, credits on profits made from selling EVs, and not from selling EVs. If Tesla made EVs without making a profit they wouldn't have received a penny.

They're credits against taxes. Since corporate income taxes are on profits, that implies that there would have to be some profits in order for there to be taxes to take the credit against, but that doesn't make them credits on profits. If they had made more profits without making more EVs, they wouldn't have gotten more credits. If they had made more profits but offset the taxes with some other credits then they might not have been able to use these, not because they didn't make enough profits but because they didn't pay enough taxes.

And this works the same for the consumer EV credits; you can't get them unless you were paying that much in taxes.

If your point is that non-refundable credits are stupid, yes. All credits should be refundable. But that doesn't have anything to do with whether they're credits for the manufacturer or the consumer.

Making the consumer credits non-refundable is actually worse, especially for the credits on used EVs. Because then you can't get the credit if you're unemployed or a student or otherwise don't make enough money to be paying the value of the EV credit in taxes, so it becomes a tax credit for the affluent that the poor aren't eligible for.

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

#266

Post by culi »

peanuty1 wrote: post #241
dzonga wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

up until I read how elon made his money - no majority of it didn't come from paypal or zip2. but from gvt contracts or loans. that's when I learned I'm playing the wrong game by trying to provide private services instead of targeting gvt.

Isn't PayPal where he got the startup capital for Tesla and SpaceX?

Well his first startup capital would be from his parents that own diamond (blood, not synthetic) mines in South Africa. That's how he and his brother started Zip2. That got bought out and left Musk with an extra $22 million. He then started x.com which, by all accounts of people who worked there, was a total failure. In all ways but one: they were the first federally insured online bank. That's why Confinity (which owned PayPal) bought x.com (and then killed it. Because they only wanted the legal benefits not the product itself). That's when Musk truly became rich

But you're right that government contracts are the way you truly get rich. A lot of people don't realize California's biggest export is airplanes and airplane parts (a business run on gov't contracts) not Silicon Valley. All of Musk's ventures (Tesla, SpaceX, Boring, solar, etc) rely on heavy subsidization/contracts with gov'ts. All of his ventures are some of the most heavily subsidized companies in the US[0] and he's been sued in several countries over subsidy fraud

[0] https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc

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