By
Steve Muchoki
March 29th, 2024
Tesla’s Elon Musk has had a long history of making his opinion known on Twitter and continued this trend with a spat with Sanders.
Following a tweet written by US Senator Bernie Sanders demanding that the extremely wealthy Americans “pay their fair share” in tax, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk responded, “I keep forgetting that you’re alive.”
These attacking comments at the US Senator’s tweet is coming amid the backdrop of Washington’s efforts to hike taxes for the ultra-wealthy.
Sanders, the former US presidential hopeful, chairs the Senate Budget Committee. He has long advocated for the wealthy to pay more taxes. According to Sanders, the wealth accumulated by Musk and Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) co-founder Jeff Bezos was immoral.
Elon Musk Spars with Bernie Sanders
Tesla’s Elon Musk has had a long history of making his opinion known on Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) and continued this trend with a spat with Sanders. He wrote, “want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the word.”
Still tweeting 11 hours later, Musk said Sanders “is a taker, not a maker.”
Elon Musk had already offloaded $6.9 billion worth of combined shares. This he did after putting up a tweet that he would sell 10% of his shares if endorsed by Twitter users. He got the endorsement of about 57.9% for his stock sale. The sales helped push the automaker’s shares down by 15%.
While the SpaceX CEO is not unused to Twitter controversy and the conducted poll was considered controversial. He already had in motion sales plans for stocks that must be exercised before expiration in August 2022.
Musk also cast this poll because of the ongoing raging debate in the US on whether billionaires are paying enough in taxes and whether levies should be placed on unrealized capital gains.
US Senate Billionaire Tax
According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk has cashed in nearly 7 billion in Tesla stock. The value of Tesla stock also rose during the pandemic. This quickly makes him the richest man in the world.
Despite this, Elon Musk slammed at the Democratic tax proposal, which would leave him with a $10 billion annual bill based on projections. He also countered the US Senator Ron Wyden, who had pushed for a wealth tax on billionaires.
Musk said he would move his headquarters from California to Austin, Texas. This state does not place levies on income tax.
To help finance President Joe Biden’s social spending agenda, the US Senate Democrats have unveiled a proposal to tax billionaire’ stocks and other tradable assets. This proposal is also to close a loophole that has allowed billionaires to defer gain taxes indefinitely.
Sen. Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with Democrats, said the billionaire tax was a “step in the right direction” but not nearly enough.
Currently, TSLA stock is trading at $1,029.99 at extended trading hours. The EV maker remains in the $1 trillion market cap club with a market capitalization of $1.05 trillion.