(IntegrityPress.org) – Billionaire Twitter CEO Elon Musk called out US President Joe Biden on Saturday, March 18 for inaccurately claiming that billionaires pay just three percent in tax.
In a Twitter post, Biden alleged that the average billionaire paid just three percent of their earnings in tax and should be required to pay at least 25 percent. While the post received more than 53,000 likes, it was quickly shot down by the social network’s CEO, who deemed it inaccurate.
Musk — who also serves as CEO of Tesla, CEO of SpaceX, and the co-founder of several other companies including Neuralink and OpenAI — claimed in his response to Biden that he had paid 53 percent in taxes on his Tesla stock options.
Musk declared that, contrary to popular belief, he had paid more income tax in 2021 and 2022 than “anyone ever in the history of Earth,” before asking Twitter’s ‘Community Notes’ fact-checking department to assess Biden’s claims.
Shortly after, an information notice was added to Biden’s post noting that it had been deemed “inaccurate” and that it relied on calculation errors which misinterpreted current tax laws. The notice linked to several fact-checking and news organizations, including FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and CNN, which also ruled Biden’s claims to be inaccurate.
According to CNN, Biden made an error in his remarks and had meant to say that the average billionaire paid just 8.2 percent in taxes. The news network noted, however, that even the 8.2 percent figure was contested since it incorrectly regarded “unrealized capital gains” as taxable.
In a separate Twitter post, Musk stated that while he supported the idea that everyone should pay their fair share in taxes, and that the wealthy should not be able to utilize tax avoidance schemes, Biden’s statements were still untrue.
Nina Turner, on the other hand — who worked as the national co-chairman of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign — weighed in by arguing that billionaires should have the entirety of their wealth taxed, and not just their income.
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