Or pay $10 billion in taxes this year! Musk: I'm going to be the person who pays the most taxes in U.S. history

According to cnn website reported on the 15th, Tesla CEO Elon Musk once again launched a fierce scolding battle with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on Twitter on the issue of paying taxes. Warren said the world's richest people have paid $0 in income taxes in recent years. Musk, on the other hand, claims that he will pay more income tax bills than anyone in U.S. history. According to CNN's calculations, Musk may pay nearly $10 billion or more in taxes this year.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk Image source: Associated Press

Musk tweeted the battle against Senator Warren

Warren has long advocated raising taxes on the wealthy by taxing the assets of the wealthiest Americans, not just their income.

After Musk was named Time Magazine's Person of the Year, Warren complained that he should pay more in taxes.

She tweeted on Tuesday: "Let's change the tax code that's being manipulated so that the Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop stealing money from other people."

Musk has never been a fuel-efficient lamp, and he immediately responded on Twitter.

"You remind me of when I was a kid, my friend's angry mom would yell at everyone for no reason," he said in a tweet.

According to Forbes real-time data, Musk is worth about $251 billion. But a ProPublica investigation reported zero taxes on him and other billionaires in 2018. That year, he had almost no taxable income because he didn't sell stock and didn't receive cash wages or bonuses.

Musk may pay nearly $10 billion in taxes this year

Musk also responded, "If you open your eyes for 2 seconds, you'll realize that I'm going to pay more taxes this year than any american in history," he wrote on a separate Tweet.

Musk has been exercising stock options he acquired in 2012 this year. These options will expire next year.

Musk could have waited until next year to exercise those options. But if Democrats pass a "rebuild better" bill, his taxes could rise significantly — perhaps 8 percentage points more than what he's paying now.

Under current tax rules, the value of shares sold by Musk minus the notional strike price of $6.24 per share counts as income. His income would be calculated at the top federal income tax rate of 37 percent, plus another 3.8 percent net investment tax, as well as some undetermined state income taxes.

So far, Musk has exercised nearly 15 million of the 22.9 million options that expire, valued at about $15.8 billion, meaning he will face a $6.4 billion federal tax bill.

Last month, Musk also sold 5.4 million shares he held in trust, most of which he has held since his IPO in 2010. The stocks will be taxed at a lower long-term capital gains rate of 20 percent, so he will face about $1.2 billion in additional federal taxes.

CNN expects Musk to probably exercise at least 4 million more options before the end of the year, which could add nearly $2 billion to his 2020 tax bill.

As a result, his federal tax bill of 2021, which so far is $7.6 billion, could increase to nearly $10 billion or more by the end of the year.

Upstream News Mawtan Compiled