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A tweet claims Elon Musk paid more in tax than every politician on earth combined:


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Which, if correct, is extraordinary.

So, did he?

stevec
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    There are some important caveats here, the claim says that he paid more **this year**, and it compares only to politicians. Musk bought Twitter this year and as far as I understand he sold a significant amount of Tesla stocks for this. So this year is probably an outlier for Musk in terms of taxes. – Mad Scientist Nov 08 '22 at 10:15
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    @MadScientist good observation. – stevec Nov 08 '22 at 10:18
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    Does Wallace only count taxes on income from political work or does he count taxes from all their income? The latter could lead to a very different question, especially considering businesspeople who also engage in politics (like Trump or Pritzker). – xyldke Nov 08 '22 at 10:58
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    @xyldke great question. Interpreting the tweet strictly would imply other income should be included. Although I guess the author may have only considered income from politicians' primary political roles. – stevec Nov 08 '22 at 11:03
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    Reminds me of [this claim](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/53042/39658) from earlier in the year. – F1Krazy Nov 08 '22 at 11:09
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    @stevec I don't think, Wallace considered a lot of factors when he made this tweet. After all, it is a hot take and not a research paper. I think not introducing such limitations makes this claim unlikely to be true (members of the Chinese NPC are ridiculously wealthy). However, I don't have solid evidence yet to back up my intuition. All politicians (well Chinese politicians alone) have a higher net worth than Musk, but that's not necessarily reflected in their taxes. – xyldke Nov 08 '22 at 11:54
  • @xyldke on other SE sites, I'd heed your observation and change the question to clarify/narrow the question's scope. But I'm not sure if that's encouraged (or even allowed) here, since we could impress our own interpretation on something ambiguous, and risk misinterpreting it. If we are allowed though, I think editing the scope to encompass only income from salaries from primary political roles would be very interesting. Not exactly sure though. – stevec Nov 08 '22 at 12:08
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    @stevec I would not edit it. If the author wanted to only consider taxes on income from political work, he should have written that. As it stands, no such considerations are part of the claim. The limited question would certainly be interesting but since there is no notable claim, I'm afraid it would be off-topic for this SE. – xyldke Nov 08 '22 at 12:45
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    Does this include ***corporation tax from his companies*** (and taxxed dividends) or is it just personal income (of which he may not take much from his companies, as he lives ***sparingly***) ? – Nigel J Nov 10 '22 at 12:40
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    What counts as a politician? Michael Bloomberg valued at $50bn+ is a failed candidate. J. B. Pritzker ($3.5bn) is governor of Illinois ([Wikipedia list](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_richest_American_politicians)). – Stuart F Nov 10 '22 at 13:51

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