Tax attorneys in San Jose have been following stories about Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, and the selling of his Tesla stock, which is worth billions of dollars. Recently, there was an exchange of words between Senator Elizabeth Warren and Musk, after he was named 2021 Person of the Year by Time Magazine.
The tiff between Musk and the senator occurred following Twitter comments by her concerning his tax obligations. The senator implied in a tweet, to which she added Musk’s picture, that the US tax system was “rigged” and the Person of the Year should “actually pay taxes” and “stop freeloading off everyone else.”
Musk seemed quick to respond to Warren and anyone else who was “wondering” about his future tax bill. He stated in a public post that he will be paying more than $11 billion in taxes for the year.
Musk Makes the News After Tweeting About Stock Sales
Along with being the CEO of Tesla Motors, Musk is also a cofounder of PayPal; the founder, CEO, and chief engineer at SpaceX; founder of The Boring Company; and cofounder of OpenAI and Neuralink. Bay Area tax lawyers noticed Musk making headlines earlier this year when he asked his 57 million Twitter followers if they thought he should sell or hold onto his stocks, considering the hefty tax bill he would likely be responsible for in April.
He created a poll on Twitter in which his followers participated. Although help with tax planning is not something most people turn to Twitter for, Musk stated that he would indeed abide by the poll, whether his followers told him to sell or to keep his Tesla stocks.
Person of the Year Tweets Back
Following Warren’s suggestion that Musk had been unfairly allowed to dodge taxes and his reply that he would be paying over $11 billion to Uncle Sam, he tweeted to Warren again, saying, “You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason.”
Tesla Stock Fetches $13.6 Billion According to the SEC
Musk presumably does not owe any back taxes, but it has been reported that his current tax bill will be approximately $15 billion, and some California IRS tax lawyers speculate that that may be the reason he decided to sell Tesla shares this year. Musk stated that he does not draw a salary from Tesla and thus had to sell shares to pay his upcoming IRS bill.
According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk sold nearly 13.6 billion worth of Tesla stock this year, and some of these sales were already in motion before the Twitter poll was created.
Musk Claims He’s Not Living Large
Musk sold a substantial amount of his real estate portfolio in 2021 and listed his final residential property for sale at the end of November. He stated he was going to try out the retirement-saver dictum “live below your means” in order to center his efforts on his mission to Mars. According to Time Magazine, Musk is the wealthiest individual on earth, with a net worth of $266 billion.
Many people get information from social media, but a tax attorney in San Jose can provide knowledgeable advice on back taxes, filing a tax return, or any other IRS issues a person might be facing.