Elon Musk has railed against the Democrats' plan to introduce a new annual tax on billionaires' unrealized capital gains to help pay for the huge social and climate funding package that lawmakers hope to finalize this week.
Senior Democrats made the announcement on Sunday.
The proposal, under consideration from Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore), would impact people with $1 billion in assets or those who have reported at least $100 million in income for three consecutive years, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
That would the affect the wealthiest 0.0002 percent—fewer than 1,000 of taxpayers, but Democrats hope it would generate $200-250 billion in revenue over 10 years.
Exactly. Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 26, 2021
Musk, the world's richest man, expressed his dismay of the proposals on Twitter.
The billionaire Tesla and SpaceX boss was responding to a tweet by Rick McCracken, an engineer and blockchain worker.
McCracken tweeted: "For USA citizens opposed to the unrealized capital gains tax proposal by Senator @RonWyden, here is an example of a tactful and diplomatic letter template I made. You can use this or make/post your own. It's important to write your elected reps. cc: @JeffBezos @elonmusk."
The template, which is designed to be sent to a lawmaker, asks the Senator or Congress member to oppose Wyden's tax proposal.
"Although the proposal targets billionaires and not myself, the government of elected representatives have a track record of scope creep when writing new taxes. I anticipate that any new unrealized capital gains taxes will slowly make their way down to middle class retirement investments over the next several years. It will start with billionaires, then eventually millionaires, then the modest investments will get hit possibly within a decade."
"Although principle residences and holdings in 401K plans apparently will be excluded, the Wyden proposal takes new tax hikes a step closer to imposing unrealized capital gains tax on the average investor."
Musk replied: "Exactly. Eventually, they run out of other people's money and then they come for you."
Newsweek has contacted Musk's team for further comment on the tax proposals.
A report from ProPublica released in June estimated that the 25 top billionaires paid on average just 3.4 percent of their expanded wealth in federal income taxes, and that several (including Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) went multiple years paying no federal income tax at all.
On October 8, Musk moved Tesla's headquarters from California to Texas, a state where he's not legally allowed to sell the cars directly to buyers but there is no personal income tax.
On Tuesday, Musk widened the gap between his personal fortune and Bezos', after a large Hertz order for his Tesla electric cars meant that his company's share price rose to more than $1 trillion.
After the Hertz order, Musk is now estimated by Bloomberg to be worth a staggering $288.6 billion.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Jack Dutton is a Newsweek Reporter based in Cape Town, South Africa. His focus is reporting on global politics and ... Read more
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