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Hi,
Elon Musk was just named Time's Person of the Year for 2021 -- despite a history of not paying federal taxes, and spending most of 2021 waging war against efforts to tax the rich.
In 2018, Musk paid $0 in federal income taxes.1 In 2021 he has seen his net worth soar to nearly $300 billion, nearly ten times what he was worth prior to the pandemic.2 Yet he spent a lot of time on Twitter attacking Bernie Sanders and other progressives for wanting to tax billionaires.3
Huge majorities of the American people strongly support higher taxes on billionaires.4 As negotiations on the Build Back Better package continue, now is an urgent time to tell Congress to tax Elon Musk and the billionaires.
Sign the petition: Demand Congress pass a wealth tax!
Elon Musk's net worth has fluctuated in 2021 as Tesla's stock has slid. But he's still worth ten times as much as he was at the start of the pandemic. Lately he and Jeff Bezos have been trading positions as the world's richest man, and both of them are strongly opposed to a billionaire's tax.
Both Musk and Bezos know that a billionaire's tax is popular -- and could pass Congress at any moment. Just a few weeks ago, Elizabeth Warren got Kyrsten Sinema to agree to a plan to tax billionaires as part of the Build Back Better agenda, only for Joe Manchin and Nancy Pelosi to block it, at least for the time being.5
But as negotiations continue to finalize the Build Back Better plan, a billionaire's tax is still alive. Even if it doesn't make it into this particular bill, it remains a wildly popular idea that could well make it into a budget plan in the near future. Which is why Elon Musk is so worried.
With a wealth tax we can take on the unprecedented power of the billionaires and help solve more problems down on planet Earth. We can't let Elon Musk or any other billionaire dictate public policy like this. It's time Congress heard from you, and not just from a billionaire with a new magazine cover and too much time on his hands.
Sign the petition: Demand Congress pass a wealth tax!
Thanks for taking action,
Robert and the team at Demand Progress
Sources:
1. ProPublica, "The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax," June 8, 2021.
2. Forbes, Net Worth of Elon Musk, November 15, 2021.
3. CNBC, "Elon Musk picked a Twitter fight with Bernie Sanders over tax policy," November 15, 2021.
4. Data for Progress, "Taxing billionaires is enormously popular," November 23, 2021.
5. Washington Post, "Democrats’ lofty tax agenda imperiled by resistance from within," November 11, 2021.
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