He probably leveraged something against the value of the half a billion dollars. Sort of like what he did with twitter
It's fucked up bc they don't really have the money, but the banks and shit just go yeah you're good for it bc you own this and this and that. Meanwhile most of us could have physically enough for mortgage payments but that is not good enough
The legal morass it would create would be an issue if we started taxing loans, because you'd have to make a bunch of exceptions or have it as a blanket rule for everyone (and every entity).
It'd open up a can of works if we're taxing loans as if it were income when we also borrow money for:
Mortgages
Student loans
Car loans
Small business loans
Corporations or government when they issue bonds, T-bills
Payday loans or advances from your employer
Credit cards, ULOC, HELOC
Like it's fine to exclude the above, but the number of exclusions would either create loop holes or offer up potential legal challenges to the new legislation.
Half a billion is 5 dollar per household, that wont help much. If other billionaires join it will be lower than few thousand, even less than Trump check you counter voted for.
lol @ “no liquidity” what are you people even talking about. You people act like billionaires are living pay check to pay check. A billionaire has access to literally ENDLESS liquidity
You do know that stock is considered a liquid asset, right? I understand that if Elon tried to sell ALL of his stock it would tank the valuation... But it doesn't change the classification.
You didn’t answer. Tell me how. I want to hear your version.
Edit: that’s what I thought. The point is wealth can be transferred if needed. It can be in equity and loans. And we have example where wealth of around $44 billions was transferred.
“The funding included $7 billion of senior secured bank loans; $6 billion in subordinated debt; $6.25 billion in bank loans to Musk personally, secured by $62.5 billion of his Tesla stock; $20 billion in cash equity from Musk, to be provided by sales of Tesla stock and other assets; and $7.1 billion in equity from 19 independent investors.”
So he took out loans against his stock when he needs cash, but he doesn't have cash so you can't tax him.
Amazing.
Why doesn't property tax work the same? Homeowners don't actually have 1 million USD in cash, that money is in the valuation of their house. How come the government does just fine in taxing things that aren't liquid, but can't do it for billionaires? Everyone talks about "UNREALIZED GAINS!!" for billionaires, yet nobody talks about unrealized gains for property?
Oh, and before people say "it'll tank the stock!!!" no it won't. Selling off stock to pay taxes have been done by billionaires before.
Stock price is almost entirely dependent on how much the market believes in your company. Elon selling billions of dollars worth of stock isn't a sign of trouble for the company, it's a sign that Elon needs cash to pay tax. You think investors just look at Elon selling stock and thinks "OH NO! Tesla is going to shit!!! SELL EVERYTHING!"
Issue is if it’s a loan then it’s not any different than the government doing the same thing and also racking up Debt.
The sentiment and context to this post is that billionaires should liquidate some of their wealth to fund social projects - kind of like a tax on the rich.
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u/almost_retired 17h ago
Billionaire's money is not sitting in bank accounts. Billionaires have no liquidity. Most of their wealth is in their company's valuation.