Media misinfo on billionaires and taxes comes to a head with Warren-Musk exchange

Progressives like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and their allies in the press have almost convinced themselves that the problem with America is that there are too many billionaires in the country with too much money.

The real problem, from Warren’s standpoint, is that not enough of that stash of billionaire wealth is controlled by her and her vote.

Thus they invented a story about how billionaires never pay taxes, a story that exemplifies how the purpose of fake news is to support whatever progressives want, whenever they want it.

In case you missed it, noted billionaire Elon Musk went toe-to-toe with Warren on taxes paid by billionaires, after Warren took to Twitter calling Musk a freeloader.

“Let’s change the rigged tax code so The [Time Magazine] Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else,” Warren tweeted Tuesday about Musk.

Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else. https://t.co/jqQxL9Run6

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) December 13, 2021

Musk responded, “Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.”

Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen 🙏

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 14, 2021

For years progressive outlets that cater to the young and impressionable, such as Teen Vogue, Vox and BuzzFeed have misrepresented the way taxes work in the country, with a resulting cry of “Billionaires don’t pay taxes” from outlets that simply know better.

In fact, progressives deliberately ignore how billionaires are really taxed because they want more money to spend right now, so they can justify spending schemes as costing zero dollars.

The important thing, according to MLive, isn’t whether a claim is true. The important thing is, “Will the public buy it?”

Here’s why the billionaire tax rag with Warren is the epitome of fake news and the public shouldn’t buy it.

For the record, Elon Musk has a $15 billion personal tax bill this year, as documented by CNBC and multiple other business outlets.

That will make Musk a king amongst taxpayers.

That will put Musk ahead of what Apple, the largest company in the world, with the second-highest profit in the world, paid for the 2021 tax year, higher than any company in the top five most profitable companies in the US.

This is exactly how billionaires are taxed under our tax code. They might not pay one year to the next, the way the rest of us do who have a paycheck, but in the end, they all pay.

With a tax liability of $15 billion for year-end, it might make Musk the biggest taxpayer in 2021 when all is said and done.

We don’t have the final numbers yet to say.

It will certainly make him the biggest individual taxpayer this year.

And this reckoning doesn’t include the taxes generated by the 70,000 people who are employed just by Tesla, Musk’s largest company, or the income taxes and sales taxes generated by the company and the other taxes that come with economic activity.

Billionaires, like other victims of the IRS, pay too.

Our tax code was fashioned to give more importance to the capital Musk uses to create jobs and taxes in the country and less importance to someone like Warren, who draws a paycheck and draws on whatever else she can make off her public image.

And in that respect, Warren sounds more like a freeloader than Musk does, no matter what Vox says.