President Joseph Biden ignited the internet when he made a provocative post on Twitter on March 18 that upset a lot of people. Fact-checkers like PolitiFact marked the tweet as fake, yet it continued to elicit fervent comments from people on other platforms. Surprisingly, tech tycoon Elon Musk couldn’t help but respond to the president’s contentious statement and join the debate.
In a previously disproved claim, Biden claimed that millionaires pay an average of 3% in income taxes, which is less than what firefighters and schoolteachers pay on a yearly basis. The president stated that the obscenely wealthy should contribute at least 25%, “It’s about basic fairness.”
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Billionaires’ tax donations have changed, and the new information is inconsistent with what the White House previously asserted. According to The Daily Mail, the president’s most recent tweet goes against data that was just just made public and suggests that the ultra-wealthy only pay an average of 8% in taxes annually. This calls into question the fairness and transparency of our tax system, and in the coming days and weeks, there will undoubtedly be more discussion and examination.
Musk replied that he combined his 40% federal and 13% state income taxes to pay 53% on his Tesla stock last year. He added he “paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth” while settling his 2021 payment. Summit News said that the amount came to about $11 billion.
Readers who were paying close attention swiftly corrected Biden’s remarks concerning tax rates. A fact-check on Twitter revealed that the average American tax rate for 2020 was an astonishingly low 13.6%, citing the Tax Foundation as their reliable source. It’s interesting to note that Americans with the highest incomes paid a rate of 25.99%, which was much more than the 3.1% average paid by those with the lowest incomes. In actuality, the richest 50% of earnings paid a staggering 97.7% of the nation’s federal income taxes last year, leaving low-income taxpayers with just 2.3% of the total. Taxes are so fascinating—who knew?
One thing is certain despite the fact that there may be room for interpretation: Americans paid a significant amount in taxes for their 2020 earnings. The top 1% of earners had a little gain in their overall income share, but they also had to pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes, according to the Tax Foundation. The average American paid 8% extra in taxes overall for the year. It simply goes to show that Uncle Sam still wants a piece of the action even when you’re making huge cash.
Regardless of how the numbers stack up, Biden’s statement seems to have merely stirred up some controversy.
