Image Credit: JD Lasica-Wikimedia Commons | CC BY 2.0
“Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else,” Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted on Monday.
Now I am not a fan of large subsidies given out to corporations by the government whether it is big oil or Tesla or something else. However, given that Elon Musk is paying $8.3 billion in taxes, I think that pretty much takes him out of the "freeloading" category. So what exactly is Elizabeth Warren talking about?
I don't doubt that there are a number of wealthy people who cheat on their taxes, or more accurately use perfectly legal loopholes to pay less. But calling Elon Musk a freeloader certainly seems unreasonable. There seems to be a never ending circle of politicians accusing the wealthy of not paying their "fair share" (without defining exactly what that is) and then raising rates but keeping all the loopholes in place so that nothing is accomplished except a tax increase on the less wealthy and a crappier economy because of it.
Yes, we'll have endless changes to the tax code, but that won't solve the problem of the government spending absurd amounts of money on absurd things and then blaming others for their stupidity. Grabbing another billion from Elon certainly won't help. More taxation and specifically a more complicated tax code just makes for more stupidity. See the government's attempt to tax every single crypto transaction for more evidence of that.