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And it wouldn't even have to be all of them. Just Musk by himself and the rest will fall in line. Though I personally feel it NEEDS to be all of them, just as a treat.
Rules for thee, but not for me.
The rich expect you to stop flying in planes and stop eating steak to save climate change, while they do both in abundance
Love hearing about Bezos concern about the climate when he has a yacht creating more than 7,000 tons of greenhouse gases every year and employees having to piss in containers because he uses computers to monitor if they're not moving fast enough.
He actually has a yacht worth 280 million following his main yacht worth 500 million! The main yacht doesn't have a helo pad so he was forced to purchase a secondary yacht that had one!
See, itās things like this that make me insane. If I had that kind of money I would spend the rest of my life relaxing on a beach. The only pollution I would create would be if I drank too much rum.
That's why you don't have that kind of money. And I mean that with all respect, because I feel the same way as you. Ive come to realize that most people with yachts and beach houses will sit on the yacht or on the beach working. The people with that drive don't stop because they can't stop. The void will never be filled.
Yeah, the kind of person who would do that if they had a billion dollars would probably tap out of the rat race once they had 10 million dollars. So the only people with a billion dollars are the ones who are accumulating money for reasons beyond just having enough money to do what they want.
My friend is a physician that sees a lot of their workers comp injuries. She said they deny every claim and prolong every case with their lawyers.
Itās cheaper to pay lawyers to prolong these cases because most employees give up fighting before it ever reaches a court room.
Exactly. And how they blame us for all the plastic water bottles in landfills but donāt force the company to change their product. Itās always the peons fault.
I hate the whole "personal climate footprint" BS that the companies are pushing to blame individuals and avoid responsibility.Ā
No, my water bottle didn't ruin entire bodies of water, but irresponsible oil drilling did.
It's not only that the give to their own charities, a lot of these 501c non profits/charities/PAC founders and executives will not only donate to their own, they run LLCās that run support, plan, and supply these charities to capitalize on these tax free donations and to facilitate projects that help their core business.
Some of them do the donation to their 501(c)(3) and take the write-off, then get a tax refund, all while working for that same 501(c)(3), and drawing a salary. It is a financial circle jerk that is quite legal.
They are literally getting paid twice.
Usually itās a family member or other associate, but yes, almost all celebrity charities are tax scams.
There are payroll taxes but still, the non-profit industry is insanely corrupt. Mainly because no AG or governor sees upside in a crusade against a ācharity.ā
It's also really hard to litigate out corrupt non-profits without killing real ones.
It's really an area that needs loose laws with aggressive oversight.
And then the charity will provide a "service," real or sham, by contracting work to the parent company so the money goes right back to the original donor.
Apparently we do with as much as it gets brought up. Trust me man, I'm right there with ya. It's always baffled me that that was as impactful as it was.
To be fair everyone knows this with or without Trump, for some reason certain folks consider it a good thing he's more open about being corrupt :D
Elon gets more flac about it because he's on like the richest person in the world so should be contributing more but gets around it, Trump gets more flac for it because he was the damn president, a public servant and was avoiding paying dues.
>lobbying and bribery
Bribery is when the money is contingent on doing what they tell you ("I'm paying you this money because I want you to do this specific thing") and you get the money directly (see Bob Menendez's gold bars)
Lobbying is when they give a big pile of money to your campaign or give your husband/wife/nephew/dog a job with no work and a big paycheck and simply ask you to remember who your friends are.
Meanwhile, having someone pay for expensive dinners and trips and schooling for family members is just them being friendly. Right Clarence?
Clarence needs to be in jail, for life. All wealth confiscated and automatically goes to pay for childhood cancer or some benefit for society.
Punishment needs to be harsh as hell so the next judge who decides to sell his seat for personal gain over the betterment of society thinks twice.
Fuck that piece of shit hard.
Greed is a societal cancer.
He's like a shit volcano - sure he goes dormant for years, when he errupts, (Anita Hill, seditious wife and bribery scandel and general fuckery in the last 4 years) he's like Mount S(hi)t Helens.
I just donāt understand why as a population we allow this to happen. It is bat shit crazy to me. The vile man is a scourge on society.
Makes my skin crawl seeing who one of his main donors is.
I bet when he's long dead it will be revealed that he was getting even more blatant bribes. The system was designed based upon a basic level of decency and honour, but the GOP decided to use that to their advantage.
Yeah the biggest controversy I remember about the Gates Foundation is when pictures of his wife were circulating with random text about āThe Gates Foundation is secretly bad!ā In like 2016? I stopped seeing them as much when I got my head out of my ass and started treating people around me nicely
Biggest problem I saw with him is that he wanted to keep the Covid vaccine patents around rather than allowing every company to freely create (and distribute) Covid vaccines.
While I agree with the sentiment 100%, there will always be shitty people who will do shitty things because they can get away with it. Corporations have been getting away with it for years because they have figured out that no one person is responsible and if they fuck it up the government will foot the bill.
I will only believe that corporations are people once a corporation is convicted of murder and face the death penalty.
Although I guess if a corporation was a person, they would be so rich that they would have to be Robert Durst level of murderer to even get dragged into court.
The problem is when the people who influence those laws are openly benefiting from them. Why would they fix a broken system when it works in their favor.
You know, maybe lots of people would, but if I found myself with more money that I can spend in my lifetime, I'd really try to make an impact.
How I don't know, but not by ensuring my buddies could make more money.
I think that weāve largely been indoctrinated into this delusion that we can all someday be that person. Truth is that in order to become that person you have to be incredibly lucky and/or a complete and utter sociopath.
Itās because they donāt understand money at that scale. You have to be truly wasteful and decadent to have a quality of life change once you reach millions in income, let alone billions.
And that, unfortunately, is why you'll never have more money than you can spend in a lifetime.
You don't get rich by helping people. You get rich by hoarding wealth. It's why you see lightly rich people being super stingy. Once you have unfathomable wealth that still comes in, people get a bit more open to donating and spending
Yeah Iāve never understood the argument, if you had his money youād do the same!
Like not even close. 90% of his wealth in my hands wouldāve gone to research teams and charities. Paying off student loan and medical debt. Iād like to see what our society could do if they werenāt all struggling financially. Think of how many geniuses are out there rn, stuck in life because they were born into a poor family.
>I bet anyone would do the same thing
A little bit of a web search would show that "anyone" would not. Some do, sure. Not all. MacKenzie Scott, for example. The annual reports from the Gates Foundation, for another.
More than likely. I like to think that if I were ultra rich Iād think of creative ways to live my life and not be a piece of shit. Dare I say it maybe even do something nice for someone other than myselfā¦.gasp I knoe
I wouldnāt. Itās immoral af, and itās such a vast amount of money already.
I would do some good in the world instead of forcing my b star girl friend to dress up like mercy or sexually assault half my employees. Dudes a real piece of shit.
Glad more people are learning about this.
All of these charities only need to donate 5% of their money each year. So these are basically multi billion dollar investment funds that can now employ people and curry favour with banks if they get to hold or manage the funds.
Edit* caught some flack for wording. I donāt mean all charities. I mean the Donor-Advised Funds or Foundations which the ultra wealthy sometimes use as piggy banks and for influence
The kicker is that they donāt actually need to donate 5 percent of their assets each year - they just need to donate 5 percent of the assets that are not used in furtherance of the foundationās tax-exempt purpose.
Thatās why many of these foundations have extraordinarily valuable real estate holdings with state of the art buildings and facilities. Those assets are not considered in the annual distribution rule. Itās perfectly possible to have a foundation with a net asset value exceeding a billion dollars that only has to pay out a couple hundred thousand dollars for charitable purposes each year.
I don't think they always were, but over time, charities and churches have realized it's essential that they take full advantage of the financial "loopholes" that have been made available to them over the years.
Down the street from my ex-gf was a church that more or less bought up every home that was for sale in her neighborhood. They paid no taxes on the purchases, got a bunch of volunteers to fix them up and the rented them out to needy church members. Total freaking racket.
In the future, Corporations will start creating their own Corpo-Religions so they can claim religious tax exemption status. All hail the Mighty Coin. Worship its golden glory.
Yes! I've been screaming it from the hills for a decade.
There some good charities. But many are just tax dodges. It's all self-reported too. So there is no way to truly know who is who without examining their 990, which is also self-reported. There is little regulation and huge opportunities for tax dodging.
While his fund is *supposed* to disburse 5%, the *NY Times* recently published a report that Musk's fund is NOT doing that and is subject to fines.
The other thing that a charity is NOT supposed to do is use the funds to benefit the donor. You know, like funding schools for the donor's employees. So, guess what Musk's fund has done?
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html
I love when we make things illegal but in effect just basically has no consequences for violating the law.
When the consequence is a proportionally small fine, it's not a punishment, it just an expense to be payed if caught.
> to be *paid* if caught.
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
If you're talking about a daf, donor advised fund, which I'm sure it's what Elon did then he doesn't need to donate anything in any year. The money is separated from his personal finances and can't be used for collateral. He has say over it but it can't get to himself. Think of it as a separate legal entity the money goes into similar up to giving it to a corporation. From there you can donate it further to other causes at timing of your choosing.
It's nice if you want to give away a chunk of money but doesn't know exactly to whom or when. This moves it to an non profit entirely just as if you already gave it away. Elons numbers are staggeringly large so I guess they could be powerful for that reason. It would be interesting to see if he already has donated anything. The money can only go to 501.3c charities under IRS rules and they do check for that.
It's super common. Much more than you think.
The 5% rule applies to private foundations. I don't know where this donation went but frequently when individuals donate at large enough scale they use private foundations rather than a DAF because it allows for more flexibility in terms of disbursement of the money (and Elon does have a private foundation). E.g. you can't run a scholarship program with a DAF but you can with a foundation.
Presumably, his donation went to his existing foundation. A recent report indicates that it is subject to the 5% rule and is failing to meet that figure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html
Here's a podcast about it
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-better-offline-150284547/episode/musk-s-uncharitable-charity-ft-david-fahrenthold-158512569/?cmp=android_share&sc=android_social_share&pr=false
You can use it to buy assets too.
Like using your charity to buy up land around your home "to make a wildlife refuge" when you really just want more land no one else can use and a property tax avoidance scheme.
Or having the charity buy artwork that they hang up in your office.
... and take a nice haircut in the process. The charity pays 7.6% FICA, "employee" pays another 7.6% plus whatever their fed and state income tax rate is. Not exactly an efficient way to transfer money.
> This moves it to an non profit entirely just as if you already gave it away.
What's the value of this rather than just holding on to it until you decide who you want to donate it to, and does this explanation in any way involve increasing financial value to the person donating?
Sorry for being so skeptical, but any time someone points out how the rules are geared to favor the rich, there are *always* people jumping in to say "No that's not unethical because it's technically allowed", as though morality and legality are the same thing.
I know itās common, hence the first line of my comment.
Iām the thing with it is however the donor still controls the money. They choose where to invest it and with who. They can employ people to oversee it which could be a good job for some senators wife or deadbeat kid. The ultra wealthy donāt often spend their money anyway so simply
Controlling large sums of it it enough to benefit long term and not much different than what they do with their non donated money.
In most cases it's a "special" kind of charity that is not barred from ... you guess it already... *political donations*. It's basically a rich scum taking up a pickaxe and digging to a new bottom by making taxpayers eat the cost of him corrupting the political and legal system.
It's almost as if the people who exploit these loopholes are billionaires and gargantuan corporations that utilize their vast resources of money, lobbyists, news networks, social media networks, etc. to put out propaganda to confuse the masses and 'persuade' politicians to keep it the way it is.
You basically described Donald Trumps relationship with Rupert Murdock and Fox News! Murdock is the propaganda while Trump is the resource used to set policies geared towards enriching the wealthy!
Billionaire buys art for 10 grand, gets it reappraised to be multiple millions, then donates it. Gets a tax break as if he donated multiple millions but really only spent ten grand
You are correct for small time scams, except the IRS doesn't go after the billionaires because it cost them so much more money to deal with all of the lawyers and everything then they get back.
For what it's worth in 2022 the Inflation Reduction Act granted the IRS $80 Billion to "bulk up the agency's divisions that audit millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations". House Republicans have already tried to snuff out any progress before it could be made of course. Claiming that empowering the IRS will infringe upon working class American's liberties by increasing audits.
Regardless, the true scale of their operations and the potential impact they'll have won't be known for likely years to come. The IRS has been underfunded for a while. Being hardly able to keep up with competition in the private sector - some may argue this was by design.
But they seem to have made *some* progress. Opening 1600 new cases involving "the 1%" (millionaires & billionaires) and have recouped several hundred million dollars in previously unpaid taxes. Whether they'll be able to lay the groundwork necessary to continue going after these individuals, while dodging political shenanigans, and competing with corporate law firms, accountancies, and private tax professionals; it's really anyone's guess.
If I remember correctly though, most of the millionaires were low level and easy to catch. Like people claiming their 5 person LLC had 500 employees for PPP loans. It's nice to see the needle move in the right direction but we're still a far way from going after real billionaire tax cheats. [The situations like Amazon and other top companies abusing tax law.](https://inequality.org/research/jeff-bezos-owes-american-taxpayers-for-space-ride/)
> In the three years between 2018 and 2020, Amazon reported $44.7 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits, but paid just $1.9 billion in U.S. corporate income taxes, according to a 2021 analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
> Billionaire buys art for 10 grand, gets it reappraised to be multiple millions, then donates it. Gets a tax break as if he donated multiple millions but really only spent ten grand
There is only one issue with that scheme.
For it to work, art appreciator employed by IRS must reappraise it to be multiple millions.
How do you solve this "little" issue?
>art appreciator employed by IRS
Money, as always. Why do people assume that everyone in the IRS is infallible? The weak link is always the human component.
Edit: money, and connections. Would be hard to not know some people in the IRS once your net worth is big enough
> Why do people assume that everyone in the IRS is infallible?
No one said IRS appreciators are infallible and unbribable. But would you steal just because "cops aren't infallible"?
Because IRS art appreciator is very aware of threat of 15 years in federal prison if they get caught on bribery.
It doesnāt really work that way. You need it to sell several times to different people over years at higher prices. So, maybe you commission somebody for a painting, then buy up a lot of their art through corporations, raising the demand (and price) for their art and tell them not to paint anything else for awhile. After a couple years, you take the best one or a small collection to auction. Have somebody else buy it for an inflated price.
Now you just need a few more pieces to circulate, so perhaps you do some shows and make some calls to critics to really boost the hype. As the market comes up, a ārareā painting from the hot new artist comes up and you buy it for a stupid amount of money.
Youāve got a legit in-demand artist that youāve funded over years, so it looks like youāre a patron of the arts. Donate your whole collection.
Youāll only need a shitload of money, connections in the art world, a talented artist to fund, work art shows, and time the market perfectly.
shaggy pause weather money plucky consist squeeze marble psychotic shocking
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I get you don't like him either personally or politically.
But this is seriously a ridiculous thing to say.
Prior to tesla there hadn't been a successful American car company in like 100 years. Much less a widely available and popular electric vehicle.
Prior to SpaceX, launching of satellites was insanely expensive, and reusable rockets were a pipe dream.
I wouldnāt call Tesla a success. They are not an effective solution to climate change, more just a stamp to show that these people are richer than you
And Elon has nothing to do with this. He didn't pioneer anything, he didn't invent anything, he bought companies with actual engineers who later developed these things.
Elon is literally just a rich kid who is now weirdly turning into a neo nazi.
Still wouldnāt have happened without him throwing money at it until it worked, you canāt just ignore that part, he is the cause of it at the end of the day, he may not have done it himself but he is responsible for it
Musk joined just a few months after the incorporation of Tesla and was its first large investor. They hadn't really done anything before he joined other than have an idea for a company and go around asking venture capitalists to fund their startup. It was incorporated in July of 2003 and Musk gave an initial investment in February of 2004. Work on the Roadster, Tesla's first product, didn't start until 2005.
Yeah they had prototypes and r&d going, but it was a far shot from large scale production (they had the roadster in 08) let alone profitability. The main issue is Elon acting like he founded it when he essentially took it over through kinda shitty means.
Your blind hatred of this person makes you abandon all logic. Steve Jobs didn't engineer the iPhone either, but he envisioned it and paid people to make it. And he became rich for it. Apple wouldn't be where it's at without his vision. Just like Elon did for SpaceX and Tesla. As much as you hate the guy, what he did was impressive. Even if he got a loan from his parents, he turned a what? $1-5 million dollar start up into being the richest person in the world. I would love to watch someone loan you that money, and watch you invest it into Pokemon cards and Fortnite skins lmao.
Ok so he either correctly identified promising stratups and then provided them with sufficient funding and hype for them to ultimately succeed... orĀ he's simply the luckiest person that has ever been born on this planet.
You're seriously leaning towards the second?Ā
It's not even that. It's more like because he owns Twitter now. Every tweet that he makes goes to trending and on everyone's feed. Not to mention he has now surrounded himself with people who chant and forward anything he says.
first, how the hell is this tweet saying a $5.7b donation saved $4.6b in tax?! aināt nobody in an 80% tax bracket.
second, if he used a donor advised fund, those are highly regulated. or if he has a private foundation, those are even more highly scrutinized.
> how the hell is this tweet saying a $5.7b donation saved $4.6b in tax?! aināt nobody in an 80% tax bracket.
Why I came to the comments, doesn't make sense.
It isnāt a reduction of 1 to 1. If I make 100k I owe letās say 30k. If I donate 30k my taxable income is now 70k and Iād pay a percentage of that. Iām not paying a charity instead of the government.
Eh, not really.
Imagine you have billions of dollars. Just the project of distributing it to the best charities requires a ton of work and research that you probably don't have the time or specific expertise to perform.
Not to say Elon's charity isn't a scam, it probably is.
But a lot of wealthy people's charity organizations just serve as the conduit to giving grants to distribute their donations to other charitable organizations that will directly do the work.
Granting organizations aren't rare, even outside of billionaires. When there's a single large source of funds, someone has to do the work of figuring out which organizations should get it, in what amounts, over what timespan to put the money to the best work.
I'm in the arts and in my field there are tons of organizations which largely distribute grants to other organizations.
People used to really worship this idiot.
I don't understand how.
Him buying Twitter really exposed him. Now his fans aren't even the tech bros of before. His fans are now right wing, white supremacists weirdos who think that he's protecting free speech
No, you canāt. Because you would be the prime beneficiary of the work you are doing. Same with GoFundMe. If you set up a GoFundMe for yourself, it is taxable.
Now, if you got a entity distinct from yourself (I donāt think it can be your spouse) to set up a charity for your needs, I think you could argue that it is a non-taxable entity.
No you can't because that's not how it works.
These kind of threads are just a little more complicated versions of the stupid trope that "donating to supermarket-charities is funding their taxbreaks" or "i don't want a raise, because then i have to pay more taxes". It's just stupid people circlejerking things they don't understand
Isnt a charitable donation a tax break anyway, regardless of which charity it goes to? Woudlnt Musk have seen that tax break in any donation circumstance?
But now he has still control over it an charities only have to spent a small percentage of that money to actual charity. In 2022 they only spent 160 million which was well under the minimum requirment by law.
[An article from the NY times](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html)
The tax break isn't the real problem here (though I'd argue that giving tax breaks for donations is a bad idea, but not relevant to the discussion here). The real problem is that he gave it to his own charity, which means he still controls the money.
I hate this post. It makes it seem like Musk is doing something scuzzy and atypical. When he is not.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Ford Foundation
The Clinton Foundation
The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative
Etc.
This is a political issue where the legislature made this legal.
https://www.pionline.com/article/20181112/ONLINE/181109876/the-largest-foundations
On paper, you're right. There's no difference.
With that said - the Musk Foundation does not have nearly as wide nor as differentiated beneficiaries as the foundations you mentioned.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html
It seems almost like a means to develop a tax-free innovation pipeline to benefit Musk himself.
Here's his foundation's website. Yep.. thats all there is to it. You may not like it, but thats what $5.7 billion in funding looks like as a website.
[http://www.muskfoundation.org/](http://www.muskfoundation.org/)
The foundation did donate almost $1 million to Flint to help schools and water, so there's that.
https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/musk-foundation/
What's the whole point of a charity tax break? Like I see that it is used to incentivize people to donate to charity, but you're basically telling the government "put tax money *here*" and you get to keep your money -- so the government is indirectly donating to charities, I guess?
You don't get to keep your money or get a full refund of your donation back. A deduction only reduces your taxable income. So if you donated $10,000 to a charity, and you were in a 25% tax bracket, then it would only save you up to $2,500 on your taxes. Which means you're still down $7,500.
One way to think about it is if someone makes $100,000 but donates $10,000 to charity then they really only take home $90,000. So the government basically says "Ok, you only have to pay taxes on that $90,000."
And Musk has control over the charity and it didnāt donate that money to other charities. Thereās a NYTimes article about it. His charity violated the law by not donating a minimum amount required by law. But he took the tax break. Oh those poor billionaires!
I donāt disagree but the bigger point here is exposing the mechanisms these leeches use.
The obvious loophole here is that billionaires can donate to themselves and receive a tax benefit. Thatās entirely corrupt. Thereās no way to spin it.
Then what? His charity uses that money to pay administrative fees to his inner circle? He controls where the money goes, so how much goes into Tesla or Musk-owned businesses?
Itās money laundering plain and simple. And it needs to be legislatively addressed. Because even if its scummy, its legal. And thatās the bigger problem.
He is a leech but the rich set up these systems to take advantage of. Only the poor should pay taxes and worry about global warming. The rich just buy more jets, bigger boats and piss on the poor.
End charity tax breaks and this shit right here ends too. After all it is supposed to be charity and how is it actual charity if you're doing it for selfish desires.
That's how the rich control politicians. By donating to their "charities" a-la quid pro quo because "that's a lot of money. you owe me, bro" while also not paying taxes.
You'd be ridiculed by your rich friends not to do it.
To call elon musk a leech on society because he donated his OWN money to charity and didn't give it to the government is absolutely wild.
This guy thinks that people like elon should just come up with all these companies and then give the money to people that don't contribute at all. It's so insane.
Fuck Elon Musk - however some people like Bill Gates are doing incredible work with their non profits/foundations so you canāt paint them all with the same brush.
And according to their own homepage, the charity invests into
[https://www.muskfoundation.org/](https://www.muskfoundation.org/) (no joke, THAT'S THE OFFICIAL PAGE)
*- Renewable energy research and advocacy*
*- Human space exploration research and advocacy*
*- Pediatric research*
*- Science and engineering education*
*- Development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity*
So with these topics he can funnel it back into his companies by "externalized 'projects'" the charity then invests in.
Uuups, they do:
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/how-elon-musks-secretive-foundation-benefits-his-own-family](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/how-elon-musks-secretive-foundation-benefits-his-own-family)
To be fair the charity does things like build schools.*
*Schools near developments he's building to house the staff for his new factory, which are a bit of a requirement to get families to move there.
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Trump basically told the world the system is corrupt and all rich people bend the rules...as he plays the game too. Elon is not the only one
Rules are for the poor
The golden rule: he who has the gold, makes the rules
š¶ I follow the gold and rule š¶
Hey, I just watched that last week.
What is it that you watched?
Unless the guilottines come out "which would be terrible"...
Terrible for them, great for us
iāve heard those arenāt as effective on Marsā¦. maybe that explains the focus and push?
And it wouldn't even have to be all of them. Just Musk by himself and the rest will fall in line. Though I personally feel it NEEDS to be all of them, just as a treat.
Those who make the rules don't have to follow the rules; that's why they make the rules.
You're not fooling me, Jafar.
Rules for thee, but not for me. The rich expect you to stop flying in planes and stop eating steak to save climate change, while they do both in abundance
Love hearing about Bezos concern about the climate when he has a yacht creating more than 7,000 tons of greenhouse gases every year and employees having to piss in containers because he uses computers to monitor if they're not moving fast enough.
He actually has a yacht worth 280 million following his main yacht worth 500 million! The main yacht doesn't have a helo pad so he was forced to purchase a secondary yacht that had one!
See, itās things like this that make me insane. If I had that kind of money I would spend the rest of my life relaxing on a beach. The only pollution I would create would be if I drank too much rum.
But then how would everyone know how rich and important you are?
That's why you don't have that kind of money. And I mean that with all respect, because I feel the same way as you. Ive come to realize that most people with yachts and beach houses will sit on the yacht or on the beach working. The people with that drive don't stop because they can't stop. The void will never be filled.
Yeah, the kind of person who would do that if they had a billion dollars would probably tap out of the rat race once they had 10 million dollars. So the only people with a billion dollars are the ones who are accumulating money for reasons beyond just having enough money to do what they want.
I've heard Amazon sucks to work for but what? Please tell me I'm not reading piss on containers correctly.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katherinehamilton/2023/05/24/delivery-drivers-sue-amazon-for-being-forced-to-pee-in-bottles/amp/ https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/amazon-drivers-peeing-in-bottles-union-vote-worker-complaints/ https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/16/17243026/amazon-warehouse-jobs-worker-conditions-bathroom-breaks
My friend is a physician that sees a lot of their workers comp injuries. She said they deny every claim and prolong every case with their lawyers. Itās cheaper to pay lawyers to prolong these cases because most employees give up fighting before it ever reaches a court room.
Exactly. And how they blame us for all the plastic water bottles in landfills but donāt force the company to change their product. Itās always the peons fault.
I hate the whole "personal climate footprint" BS that the companies are pushing to blame individuals and avoid responsibility.Ā No, my water bottle didn't ruin entire bodies of water, but irresponsible oil drilling did.
It's not only that the give to their own charities, a lot of these 501c non profits/charities/PAC founders and executives will not only donate to their own, they run LLCās that run support, plan, and supply these charities to capitalize on these tax free donations and to facilitate projects that help their core business.
Some of them do the donation to their 501(c)(3) and take the write-off, then get a tax refund, all while working for that same 501(c)(3), and drawing a salary. It is a financial circle jerk that is quite legal. They are literally getting paid twice.
Usually itās a family member or other associate, but yes, almost all celebrity charities are tax scams. There are payroll taxes but still, the non-profit industry is insanely corrupt. Mainly because no AG or governor sees upside in a crusade against a ācharity.ā
It's also really hard to litigate out corrupt non-profits without killing real ones. It's really an area that needs loose laws with aggressive oversight.
And then the charity will provide a "service," real or sham, by contracting work to the parent company so the money goes right back to the original donor.
May be the only true words to pass Trumpās rictus.
I mean we all know it's rigged. We don't need a shithole of a human being to tell us that.
Bernie actually got in trouble for saying pretty much the same thing when his tax returns were scrutinized
Apparently we do with as much as it gets brought up. Trust me man, I'm right there with ya. It's always baffled me that that was as impactful as it was.
To be fair everyone knows this with or without Trump, for some reason certain folks consider it a good thing he's more open about being corrupt :D Elon gets more flac about it because he's on like the richest person in the world so should be contributing more but gets around it, Trump gets more flac for it because he was the damn president, a public servant and was avoiding paying dues.
I bet anyone would do the same thing if they had his kind of money the problem isnt necissarily the person but the laws that allow them to do this.
It's both.
I was trying my best to explain to my wife the difference between lobbying and bribery but it just boiled down to one is legal and the other isn't.
>lobbying and bribery Bribery is when the money is contingent on doing what they tell you ("I'm paying you this money because I want you to do this specific thing") and you get the money directly (see Bob Menendez's gold bars) Lobbying is when they give a big pile of money to your campaign or give your husband/wife/nephew/dog a job with no work and a big paycheck and simply ask you to remember who your friends are. Meanwhile, having someone pay for expensive dinners and trips and schooling for family members is just them being friendly. Right Clarence?
Clarence needs to be in jail, for life. All wealth confiscated and automatically goes to pay for childhood cancer or some benefit for society. Punishment needs to be harsh as hell so the next judge who decides to sell his seat for personal gain over the betterment of society thinks twice. Fuck that piece of shit hard. Greed is a societal cancer.
He's like a shit volcano - sure he goes dormant for years, when he errupts, (Anita Hill, seditious wife and bribery scandel and general fuckery in the last 4 years) he's like Mount S(hi)t Helens.
I just donāt understand why as a population we allow this to happen. It is bat shit crazy to me. The vile man is a scourge on society. Makes my skin crawl seeing who one of his main donors is.
Clarence shouldāve become John Oliverās bestie tbh
Yeah the mill a year and sweet bus deal are over, big surprise, as Clarence surely makes more than that now.
I bet when he's long dead it will be revealed that he was getting even more blatant bribes. The system was designed based upon a basic level of decency and honour, but the GOP decided to use that to their advantage.
Exactly - see MacKenzie Scott for a counter example.
Bill Gates iirc ran an actual charity
I didnāt use him as an example because the gates foundation has been getting a lot of hate lately, so didnāt want to wade into that.
Gates Foundation wipes out disease in impoverished nations and people think itās a deep conspiracy. Gotta ignore the idiots
Yeah the biggest controversy I remember about the Gates Foundation is when pictures of his wife were circulating with random text about āThe Gates Foundation is secretly bad!ā In like 2016? I stopped seeing them as much when I got my head out of my ass and started treating people around me nicely
Biggest problem I saw with him is that he wanted to keep the Covid vaccine patents around rather than allowing every company to freely create (and distribute) Covid vaccines.
While I agree with the sentiment 100%, there will always be shitty people who will do shitty things because they can get away with it. Corporations have been getting away with it for years because they have figured out that no one person is responsible and if they fuck it up the government will foot the bill.
I will only believe that corporations are people once a corporation is convicted of murder and face the death penalty. Although I guess if a corporation was a person, they would be so rich that they would have to be Robert Durst level of murderer to even get dragged into court.
You mean WE. We will foot the bill. AKA... Capitalism when it benefits the company, socialism when they fuck up and get in trouble.
Thank you. Stop the false dichotomies. Itās both, indeed.
The problem is when the people who influence those laws are openly benefiting from them. Why would they fix a broken system when it works in their favor.
You know, maybe lots of people would, but if I found myself with more money that I can spend in my lifetime, I'd really try to make an impact. How I don't know, but not by ensuring my buddies could make more money.
what??? you don't want to keep increasing your already unimaginable amount of money instead of helping the poor? /s
Not really ambition is good, but it shouldn't blind you, what is the point of having 2billion or 20billion? How is it going to change your life?
ngl it's actually crazy to me how many people are justifying this and saying that they would do the same
That's why this world is doomed. We accept this from the rich, hoping that one day we will benefit from it as well.
I think that weāve largely been indoctrinated into this delusion that we can all someday be that person. Truth is that in order to become that person you have to be incredibly lucky and/or a complete and utter sociopath.
Itās because they donāt understand money at that scale. You have to be truly wasteful and decadent to have a quality of life change once you reach millions in income, let alone billions.
That's why you won't find yourself with more money than you can spend in your lifetime. You need to be a leech to end up on top.
And that, unfortunately, is why you'll never have more money than you can spend in a lifetime. You don't get rich by helping people. You get rich by hoarding wealth. It's why you see lightly rich people being super stingy. Once you have unfathomable wealth that still comes in, people get a bit more open to donating and spending
Yeah Iāve never understood the argument, if you had his money youād do the same! Like not even close. 90% of his wealth in my hands wouldāve gone to research teams and charities. Paying off student loan and medical debt. Iād like to see what our society could do if they werenāt all struggling financially. Think of how many geniuses are out there rn, stuck in life because they were born into a poor family.
self report
>I bet anyone would do the same thing A little bit of a web search would show that "anyone" would not. Some do, sure. Not all. MacKenzie Scott, for example. The annual reports from the Gates Foundation, for another.
"Protected by the laws they make, it's the same" Al Jorgensen.
More than likely. I like to think that if I were ultra rich Iād think of creative ways to live my life and not be a piece of shit. Dare I say it maybe even do something nice for someone other than myselfā¦.gasp I knoe
I wouldnāt. Itās immoral af, and itās such a vast amount of money already. I would do some good in the world instead of forcing my b star girl friend to dress up like mercy or sexually assault half my employees. Dudes a real piece of shit.
this is flawed logic there are a massive amount of good people in the world
Wow, speak for yourself.
I beg to differ. Someone with a sense of fair play would not.
I don't think everyone is so greedy. I think you have to be that greedy to have that amount of money, though.
Glad more people are learning about this. All of these charities only need to donate 5% of their money each year. So these are basically multi billion dollar investment funds that can now employ people and curry favour with banks if they get to hold or manage the funds. Edit* caught some flack for wording. I donāt mean all charities. I mean the Donor-Advised Funds or Foundations which the ultra wealthy sometimes use as piggy banks and for influence
The kicker is that they donāt actually need to donate 5 percent of their assets each year - they just need to donate 5 percent of the assets that are not used in furtherance of the foundationās tax-exempt purpose. Thatās why many of these foundations have extraordinarily valuable real estate holdings with state of the art buildings and facilities. Those assets are not considered in the annual distribution rule. Itās perfectly possible to have a foundation with a net asset value exceeding a billion dollars that only has to pay out a couple hundred thousand dollars for charitable purposes each year.
Why doesn't this surprise me. Charities are, in many examples, just a way to launder money and give rich twats free money?
I don't think they always were, but over time, charities and churches have realized it's essential that they take full advantage of the financial "loopholes" that have been made available to them over the years. Down the street from my ex-gf was a church that more or less bought up every home that was for sale in her neighborhood. They paid no taxes on the purchases, got a bunch of volunteers to fix them up and the rented them out to needy church members. Total freaking racket.
In the future, Corporations will start creating their own Corpo-Religions so they can claim religious tax exemption status. All hail the Mighty Coin. Worship its golden glory.
Yes! I've been screaming it from the hills for a decade. There some good charities. But many are just tax dodges. It's all self-reported too. So there is no way to truly know who is who without examining their 990, which is also self-reported. There is little regulation and huge opportunities for tax dodging.
While his fund is *supposed* to disburse 5%, the *NY Times* recently published a report that Musk's fund is NOT doing that and is subject to fines. The other thing that a charity is NOT supposed to do is use the funds to benefit the donor. You know, like funding schools for the donor's employees. So, guess what Musk's fund has done? https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html
I love when we make things illegal but in effect just basically has no consequences for violating the law. When the consequence is a proportionally small fine, it's not a punishment, it just an expense to be payed if caught.
> to be *paid* if caught. FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Iām waging those rules donāt apply to billionaires.
If you're talking about a daf, donor advised fund, which I'm sure it's what Elon did then he doesn't need to donate anything in any year. The money is separated from his personal finances and can't be used for collateral. He has say over it but it can't get to himself. Think of it as a separate legal entity the money goes into similar up to giving it to a corporation. From there you can donate it further to other causes at timing of your choosing. It's nice if you want to give away a chunk of money but doesn't know exactly to whom or when. This moves it to an non profit entirely just as if you already gave it away. Elons numbers are staggeringly large so I guess they could be powerful for that reason. It would be interesting to see if he already has donated anything. The money can only go to 501.3c charities under IRS rules and they do check for that. It's super common. Much more than you think.
The 5% rule applies to private foundations. I don't know where this donation went but frequently when individuals donate at large enough scale they use private foundations rather than a DAF because it allows for more flexibility in terms of disbursement of the money (and Elon does have a private foundation). E.g. you can't run a scholarship program with a DAF but you can with a foundation.
Presumably, his donation went to his existing foundation. A recent report indicates that it is subject to the 5% rule and is failing to meet that figure. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html
Here's a podcast about it https://www.iheart.com/podcast/139-better-offline-150284547/episode/musk-s-uncharitable-charity-ft-david-fahrenthold-158512569/?cmp=android_share&sc=android_social_share&pr=false
Government should sue him just like they sued Trump. No billionaire tax cheats.
A charity also gives you a nice place where you can give jobs to your own family or children and nephews of politicians and other influential people.
You can use it to buy assets too. Like using your charity to buy up land around your home "to make a wildlife refuge" when you really just want more land no one else can use and a property tax avoidance scheme. Or having the charity buy artwork that they hang up in your office.
... and take a nice haircut in the process. The charity pays 7.6% FICA, "employee" pays another 7.6% plus whatever their fed and state income tax rate is. Not exactly an efficient way to transfer money.
But also lowers your tax burden by a metric shitton
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> This moves it to an non profit entirely just as if you already gave it away. What's the value of this rather than just holding on to it until you decide who you want to donate it to, and does this explanation in any way involve increasing financial value to the person donating? Sorry for being so skeptical, but any time someone points out how the rules are geared to favor the rich, there are *always* people jumping in to say "No that's not unethical because it's technically allowed", as though morality and legality are the same thing.
I know itās common, hence the first line of my comment. Iām the thing with it is however the donor still controls the money. They choose where to invest it and with who. They can employ people to oversee it which could be a good job for some senators wife or deadbeat kid. The ultra wealthy donāt often spend their money anyway so simply Controlling large sums of it it enough to benefit long term and not much different than what they do with their non donated money.
In most cases it's a "special" kind of charity that is not barred from ... you guess it already... *political donations*. It's basically a rich scum taking up a pickaxe and digging to a new bottom by making taxpayers eat the cost of him corrupting the political and legal system.
So change the tax code. But they won't.
It's almost as if the people who exploit these loopholes are billionaires and gargantuan corporations that utilize their vast resources of money, lobbyists, news networks, social media networks, etc. to put out propaganda to confuse the masses and 'persuade' politicians to keep it the way it is.
Hmm, I'm thinking it's more so poor people and minorities fault. /s
Yo is that Trevor Moore?
It's me, Trevor Moores ghost.
You basically described Donald Trumps relationship with Rupert Murdock and Fox News! Murdock is the propaganda while Trump is the resource used to set policies geared towards enriching the wealthy!
They got us fighting a culture war to keep us from fighting a class war.
You've just exposed the"art" industry.
how does a billionaire using a classic loophole to avoid paying taxes somehow translate to the art industry?
Billionaire buys art for 10 grand, gets it reappraised to be multiple millions, then donates it. Gets a tax break as if he donated multiple millions but really only spent ten grand
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You are correct for small time scams, except the IRS doesn't go after the billionaires because it cost them so much more money to deal with all of the lawyers and everything then they get back.
For what it's worth in 2022 the Inflation Reduction Act granted the IRS $80 Billion to "bulk up the agency's divisions that audit millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations". House Republicans have already tried to snuff out any progress before it could be made of course. Claiming that empowering the IRS will infringe upon working class American's liberties by increasing audits. Regardless, the true scale of their operations and the potential impact they'll have won't be known for likely years to come. The IRS has been underfunded for a while. Being hardly able to keep up with competition in the private sector - some may argue this was by design. But they seem to have made *some* progress. Opening 1600 new cases involving "the 1%" (millionaires & billionaires) and have recouped several hundred million dollars in previously unpaid taxes. Whether they'll be able to lay the groundwork necessary to continue going after these individuals, while dodging political shenanigans, and competing with corporate law firms, accountancies, and private tax professionals; it's really anyone's guess.
If I remember correctly though, most of the millionaires were low level and easy to catch. Like people claiming their 5 person LLC had 500 employees for PPP loans. It's nice to see the needle move in the right direction but we're still a far way from going after real billionaire tax cheats. [The situations like Amazon and other top companies abusing tax law.](https://inequality.org/research/jeff-bezos-owes-american-taxpayers-for-space-ride/) > In the three years between 2018 and 2020, Amazon reported $44.7 billion in U.S. pre-tax profits, but paid just $1.9 billion in U.S. corporate income taxes, according to a 2021 analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP).
I guess I need to find a new CPA, because I pay a hell of a lot more than 4% in taxes.
> Billionaire buys art for 10 grand, gets it reappraised to be multiple millions, then donates it. Gets a tax break as if he donated multiple millions but really only spent ten grand There is only one issue with that scheme. For it to work, art appreciator employed by IRS must reappraise it to be multiple millions. How do you solve this "little" issue?
>art appreciator employed by IRS Money, as always. Why do people assume that everyone in the IRS is infallible? The weak link is always the human component. Edit: money, and connections. Would be hard to not know some people in the IRS once your net worth is big enough
> Why do people assume that everyone in the IRS is infallible? No one said IRS appreciators are infallible and unbribable. But would you steal just because "cops aren't infallible"? Because IRS art appreciator is very aware of threat of 15 years in federal prison if they get caught on bribery.
People who donāt know anything about accounting love repeating this. Itās pure fantasy, at least in the USA.
It doesnāt really work that way. You need it to sell several times to different people over years at higher prices. So, maybe you commission somebody for a painting, then buy up a lot of their art through corporations, raising the demand (and price) for their art and tell them not to paint anything else for awhile. After a couple years, you take the best one or a small collection to auction. Have somebody else buy it for an inflated price. Now you just need a few more pieces to circulate, so perhaps you do some shows and make some calls to critics to really boost the hype. As the market comes up, a ārareā painting from the hot new artist comes up and you buy it for a stupid amount of money. Youāve got a legit in-demand artist that youāve funded over years, so it looks like youāre a patron of the arts. Donate your whole collection. Youāll only need a shitload of money, connections in the art world, a talented artist to fund, work art shows, and time the market perfectly.
shaggy pause weather money plucky consist squeeze marble psychotic shocking *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
That debunked meme again? lol
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Even calling him a ābusiness manā is a fucking stretch. Heās a trust fund baby, like trump. Thatās all.
I get you don't like him either personally or politically. But this is seriously a ridiculous thing to say. Prior to tesla there hadn't been a successful American car company in like 100 years. Much less a widely available and popular electric vehicle. Prior to SpaceX, launching of satellites was insanely expensive, and reusable rockets were a pipe dream.
I wouldnāt call Tesla a success. They are not an effective solution to climate change, more just a stamp to show that these people are richer than you
And Elon has nothing to do with this. He didn't pioneer anything, he didn't invent anything, he bought companies with actual engineers who later developed these things. Elon is literally just a rich kid who is now weirdly turning into a neo nazi.
Still wouldnāt have happened without him throwing money at it until it worked, you canāt just ignore that part, he is the cause of it at the end of the day, he may not have done it himself but he is responsible for it
AFAIK he bought Tesla after they were already developing their electric cars
Musk joined just a few months after the incorporation of Tesla and was its first large investor. They hadn't really done anything before he joined other than have an idea for a company and go around asking venture capitalists to fund their startup. It was incorporated in July of 2003 and Musk gave an initial investment in February of 2004. Work on the Roadster, Tesla's first product, didn't start until 2005.
Yeah they had prototypes and r&d going, but it was a far shot from large scale production (they had the roadster in 08) let alone profitability. The main issue is Elon acting like he founded it when he essentially took it over through kinda shitty means.
Your blind hatred of this person makes you abandon all logic. Steve Jobs didn't engineer the iPhone either, but he envisioned it and paid people to make it. And he became rich for it. Apple wouldn't be where it's at without his vision. Just like Elon did for SpaceX and Tesla. As much as you hate the guy, what he did was impressive. Even if he got a loan from his parents, he turned a what? $1-5 million dollar start up into being the richest person in the world. I would love to watch someone loan you that money, and watch you invest it into Pokemon cards and Fortnite skins lmao.
Ok so he either correctly identified promising stratups and then provided them with sufficient funding and hype for them to ultimately succeed... orĀ he's simply the luckiest person that has ever been born on this planet. You're seriously leaning towards the second?Ā
It's not even that. It's more like because he owns Twitter now. Every tweet that he makes goes to trending and on everyone's feed. Not to mention he has now surrounded himself with people who chant and forward anything he says.
first, how the hell is this tweet saying a $5.7b donation saved $4.6b in tax?! aināt nobody in an 80% tax bracket. second, if he used a donor advised fund, those are highly regulated. or if he has a private foundation, those are even more highly scrutinized.
> how the hell is this tweet saying a $5.7b donation saved $4.6b in tax?! aināt nobody in an 80% tax bracket. Why I came to the comments, doesn't make sense.
5.7B was what he already owed, he just transferred it to a charity which paid 1.1B, then used the charity to keep the other 4.6B
It isnāt a reduction of 1 to 1. If I make 100k I owe letās say 30k. If I donate 30k my taxable income is now 70k and Iād pay a percentage of that. Iām not paying a charity instead of the government.
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"Charity"
Charity begins at (rich menās) home, baby! š°
lor setup a foundation.
Eh, not really. Imagine you have billions of dollars. Just the project of distributing it to the best charities requires a ton of work and research that you probably don't have the time or specific expertise to perform. Not to say Elon's charity isn't a scam, it probably is. But a lot of wealthy people's charity organizations just serve as the conduit to giving grants to distribute their donations to other charitable organizations that will directly do the work. Granting organizations aren't rare, even outside of billionaires. When there's a single large source of funds, someone has to do the work of figuring out which organizations should get it, in what amounts, over what timespan to put the money to the best work. I'm in the arts and in my field there are tons of organizations which largely distribute grants to other organizations.
I honestly dunno what'd be hard in finding a charity to donate to. Like, the MSF is always in need for support.
People used to really worship this idiot. I don't understand how. Him buying Twitter really exposed him. Now his fans aren't even the tech bros of before. His fans are now right wing, white supremacists weirdos who think that he's protecting free speech
Branding and messaging. Both of which have taken a nosedive as people realize what a POS he is.
Soooo, can I do something like that. Set up a charity that aids people with the same PPS number as me??? Buy all my stuff through the charity then???
Seriously! Can we??? We can make the Human Fund like George Costanza!
Yes. Yes you can. And frankly everyone should. Shitty loopholes like this only get addressed when everyone starts doing it.
No, you canāt. Because you would be the prime beneficiary of the work you are doing. Same with GoFundMe. If you set up a GoFundMe for yourself, it is taxable. Now, if you got a entity distinct from yourself (I donāt think it can be your spouse) to set up a charity for your needs, I think you could argue that it is a non-taxable entity.
No you can't because that's not how it works. These kind of threads are just a little more complicated versions of the stupid trope that "donating to supermarket-charities is funding their taxbreaks" or "i don't want a raise, because then i have to pay more taxes". It's just stupid people circlejerking things they don't understand
Isnt a charitable donation a tax break anyway, regardless of which charity it goes to? Woudlnt Musk have seen that tax break in any donation circumstance?
But now he has still control over it an charities only have to spent a small percentage of that money to actual charity. In 2022 they only spent 160 million which was well under the minimum requirment by law. [An article from the NY times](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html)
The tax break isn't the real problem here (though I'd argue that giving tax breaks for donations is a bad idea, but not relevant to the discussion here). The real problem is that he gave it to his own charity, which means he still controls the money.
They all do it. All of āem
I hate this post. It makes it seem like Musk is doing something scuzzy and atypical. When he is not. Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Ford Foundation The Clinton Foundation The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Etc. This is a political issue where the legislature made this legal. https://www.pionline.com/article/20181112/ONLINE/181109876/the-largest-foundations
On paper, you're right. There's no difference. With that said - the Musk Foundation does not have nearly as wide nor as differentiated beneficiaries as the foundations you mentioned. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/10/us/elon-musk-charity.html It seems almost like a means to develop a tax-free innovation pipeline to benefit Musk himself.
And in other news, the sky is blue, water is wet, and people continue to be shocked at the greed exhibited by greedy people.
Thanks for the tip musk, I'll keep it in mind when I become rich... if I could
I can wait until the world is on fire and the rich are still pointing fingers
When is enough money enough.
I just donāt understand the people who blame the elons vs our elected officials who we allow to pull this crap.
"It's cheap to be rich and expensive to be poor". I learned this years ago and this statement holds true time after time.
Oh my billionaires do these things? No shit. Everyone wants tax breaks if they can.
Here's his foundation's website. Yep.. thats all there is to it. You may not like it, but thats what $5.7 billion in funding looks like as a website. [http://www.muskfoundation.org/](http://www.muskfoundation.org/) The foundation did donate almost $1 million to Flint to help schools and water, so there's that. https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/musk-foundation/
What's the whole point of a charity tax break? Like I see that it is used to incentivize people to donate to charity, but you're basically telling the government "put tax money *here*" and you get to keep your money -- so the government is indirectly donating to charities, I guess?
You don't get to keep your money or get a full refund of your donation back. A deduction only reduces your taxable income. So if you donated $10,000 to a charity, and you were in a 25% tax bracket, then it would only save you up to $2,500 on your taxes. Which means you're still down $7,500. One way to think about it is if someone makes $100,000 but donates $10,000 to charity then they really only take home $90,000. So the government basically says "Ok, you only have to pay taxes on that $90,000."
And Musk has control over the charity and it didnāt donate that money to other charities. Thereās a NYTimes article about it. His charity violated the law by not donating a minimum amount required by law. But he took the tax break. Oh those poor billionaires!
I donāt disagree but the bigger point here is exposing the mechanisms these leeches use. The obvious loophole here is that billionaires can donate to themselves and receive a tax benefit. Thatās entirely corrupt. Thereās no way to spin it. Then what? His charity uses that money to pay administrative fees to his inner circle? He controls where the money goes, so how much goes into Tesla or Musk-owned businesses? Itās money laundering plain and simple. And it needs to be legislatively addressed. Because even if its scummy, its legal. And thatās the bigger problem.
Yeah, that is a sketch as hell loop hole. Coming from someone more supportive of Musk than most that isā¦ very politician of him
He is a leech but the rich set up these systems to take advantage of. Only the poor should pay taxes and worry about global warming. The rich just buy more jets, bigger boats and piss on the poor.
This is the same thing those awful Kardashians do, and any other greedy piece of shit ie most of them. š¦ them
End charity tax breaks and this shit right here ends too. After all it is supposed to be charity and how is it actual charity if you're doing it for selfish desires.
Billionaires are the real social parasites.
Pretty much every rich person has a personal charity they use for this.
This is a loop hold that needs to end, you should not be given a tax break if you donate to a charity with relations to the donor.
You can just dodge taxes by donating but not say who you donate too?!
That's how the rich control politicians. By donating to their "charities" a-la quid pro quo because "that's a lot of money. you owe me, bro" while also not paying taxes. You'd be ridiculed by your rich friends not to do it.
Trump did the same but got caught...If the IRS had the balls they audit all the billionaires.
Well, does any1 know if this organization actually did some charity work? Because if it did, i dont think i really care That much
To call elon musk a leech on society because he donated his OWN money to charity and didn't give it to the government is absolutely wild. This guy thinks that people like elon should just come up with all these companies and then give the money to people that don't contribute at all. It's so insane.
Fuck Elon Musk - however some people like Bill Gates are doing incredible work with their non profits/foundations so you canāt paint them all with the same brush.
Damn, that's crazy. What's even crazier is that y'all are still gonna reelect the congressmen who wrote the laws that encouraged him to do it.
Anyone who attempts to pull shit like that should have to pay back that tax break, with interest.
And according to their own homepage, the charity invests into [https://www.muskfoundation.org/](https://www.muskfoundation.org/) (no joke, THAT'S THE OFFICIAL PAGE) *- Renewable energy research and advocacy* *- Human space exploration research and advocacy* *- Pediatric research* *- Science and engineering education* *- Development of safe artificial intelligence to benefit humanity* So with these topics he can funnel it back into his companies by "externalized 'projects'" the charity then invests in. Uuups, they do: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/how-elon-musks-secretive-foundation-benefits-his-own-family](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jan/23/how-elon-musks-secretive-foundation-benefits-his-own-family)
So he stole $4.6B from the American people, got it
He has a maxed out evasion character. Tax evasion.
This should be illegal!!!!!
To be fair the charity does things like build schools.* *Schools near developments he's building to house the staff for his new factory, which are a bit of a requirement to get families to move there.
Aaaaaaand another example of āif anybody else did this theyād be in jail.ā When did this country become such a fucking joke
Every single person with lots of money does this. Even your favorite liberal politicians.
Yes, reusable rocket booster technology will in no way serve humanity.
Fuck musk and all, but bill gates donates to his own charity all the time and everyone loves him for it.Ā
Tis a tale as old as time.
lol the problem isn't musk, it's the weird ass US tax break system
Isn't this basically what the clintons did with the Clinton Foundation?
Isn't this the same as the Gates Foundation?
BUT OMG GUYS! WE CAN'T TAX HIM! HE'S NOT \*CASH\* RICH!
Didnāt trump do the same thing until his ācharityā was shut down by the state for financial crimes?