A Modest Wealth Tax Would Have Slowed Musk’s Net Worth by 72% Percent over Last Decade
WASHINGTON, D.C. — With SpaceX set to launch its initial public offering (IPO) today, Tax the Greedy Billionaires Campaign Director Igor Volsky issued the following statement:
“Elon Musk became the world’s first trillionaire because our tax system shields the wealth of the ultra-wealthy from taxation while requiring working people to pay taxes on every paycheck. Today’s milestone should serve as a wake-up call to us all: Unless we plan to cede control and agency over our future to a handful of ultra-wealthy individuals, lawmakers must pursue bold tax policies that actually meet this moment—not just slowing the accumulation of extreme wealth, but reversing it. That means passing taxes on billionaire wealth ambitious enough to make the ultra-wealthy less wealthy, reduce the stranglehold they have over our economy and democracy, and restore the ideal that no one in America gets to buy their way to unchecked power.”
A Modest Wealth Tax Would Have Dramatically Slowed Musk’s Fortune
Musk reached this disturbing level of extreme wealth thanks in large part to the failures of our tax system. More than half of the real-world income available to the top 0.1% of wealth-hoarders goes totally untaxed. We propose a simple solution to the tax code to reduce their concentration of wealth and power: A 5% tax on households with wealth over $50 million and a 10% tax on households with wealth over $250 million.
If this Five and Dime wealth tax had been in place from 2015 until 2026, Musk would be worth $285 billion – that’s 72% less than his current $1 trillion net worth. Chipping away at his fortune would reduce his coercive control over our economy and democracy, while generating revenue to invest in working Americans.
Musk Exemplifies How the Ultra-Wealthy Shift Risk to Taxpayers, while Hoarding Profits for Personal Gain
Elon Musk built his obscene wealth on the backs of hardworking Americans. He leveraged his unchecked extreme wealth and unprecedented power to further rig the system in his favor, ensuring he became even wealthier and more powerful:
- Musk’s businesses received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits since 2003. As taxpayers took all the risk and bore all of the costs, Musk has privatized all of the profit.
- Musk then used his extreme wealth to erode the “one person, one vote” principle underpinning our democracy and push his own agendas by controlling the information ecosystem. Musk personally financed the Trump campaign’s ground operations and even gave individual Trump voters $1 million per day in a legally dubious scheme that amounted to paying for votes. And after buying Twitter for $44 billion, Musk transformed the platform into a pro-Trump echo chamber overrun with hate speech.
- Musk’s unrivaled influence over Trump gave him a position in the government he then used to gain access to the sensitive financial data of millions of Americans and fire the federal regulators charged with protecting us from his companies’ corporate malfeasance.
Taxing Musk, Billionaires Overwhelmingly Popular:
An April 2026 poll by Impact Research shows that:
- Nearly eight in ten voters overwhelmingly support increasing taxes on billionaires, including 75% of Independents and even 65% of Republicans.
- Voters reward candidates who support raising taxes on billionaires and punish those who don’t: Candidates who embrace raising taxes on billionaires hold a 50-point electoral advantage over those who oppose such policies.
- That gap widens to a 79-point margin with Democratic primary voters, with 83% more likely to vote for a candidate who supports an increase versus just 4% for a candidate who is opposed.
About Tax the Greedy Billionaires:
TGB works with constituencies and groups across the country to highlight how excessive concentrations of wealth are making life harder for all of us by undermining family stability, rising housing and health care costs, eroding racial justice, and devastating the climate.
For more information about the Tax the Greedy Billionaires campaign, visit https://taxgreed.org/
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