Elon Musk Obliterates Biden After He Claims Billionaires Don’t Pay Their Fair Share

World’s richest man Elon Musk presented a few choice statistics to President Joe Biden via Twitter, who on Saturday tweeted a statement affirming his support for a minimum 25 percent tax on billionaires.

Musk, Twitter’s owner and founder of Tesla Motors, quickly pounced, citing a combined tax rate of 53 percent he paid on Tesla stock options at both the state and federal level. He added that he paid the most taxes of any individual in 2021, a claim that Forbes Magazine found likely to be true based on stock sales worth nearly $13 billion that year.

I paid 53% taxes on my Tesla stock options (40% Federal & 13% state), so I must be lifting the average!

I also paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth for 2021 and will do that again in 2022.@CommunityNotes, is the 3% number cited above accurate?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2023

Musk’s response garnered nearly 30,000 retweets, over three times the number who retweeted Biden’s original statement. Readers added context to Biden’s tweet as well to show that the president’s claim relies on taxing unrealized gains on unsold stocks as income, something not eligible to be taxed under current IRS laws. Nearly 18,000 tweets were sent in response to Biden’s statement, a “ratio” that suggests more people disagreed than agreed with the statement.

Following up to his original tweet, Musk agreed that tax-avoidance schemes by the ultra-rich should be discouraged. He also called for ending GRATs, or grantor retained annuity trusts, a type of financial instrument often used to make high-dollar gifts to family members without being taxed.

I certainly agree that everyone should pay taxes and not engage in elaborate tax-avoidance schemes.

Would be curious to hear how these other “billionaires” are so good at avoiding taxes!

We should get rid of GRATs, but maybe other things too.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 18, 2023

This isn’t the first time that Musk has openly clashed with Democratic Party progressives seeking overhauls of the US tax system. In 2021 he clapped back at US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Ma.) for citing Musk, who was named Time’s Person of the Year, as a “freeloader living off the backs” of everyday American workers. Musk again cited that he paid the most taxes in 2021 and added, “Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen 🙏.”

You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2021

Since purchasing Twitter for a record $44 billion last year, Must has antagonized progressive lawmakers and activists alike with his online provocations. New features, such as the ability for readers to add context to tweets, have allowed some of Musk’s followers to label statement by Biden, Warren, and others as misleading, a label that was previously often applied to tweets by former President Donald Trump.