Elon Musk Has a Giant Charity. Its Money Stays Close to Home
I once worked for a fairly high-net worth individual, and of course he had a charitable "foundation". I couldn't tell what the foundation did besides "own his assets". It certainly seemed like something set up to avoid taxes, but I didn't really get into his business so who knows. Apparently everyone with that much money has a "charitable foundation", or so I'm told.
> But unlike Bill Gates, who has deployed his fortune in an effort to improve health care across Africa, or Walmart’s Walton family, which has spurred change in the American education system, Musk’s philanthropy has been largely self-serving — making him eligible for enormous tax breaks and helping his businesses.
This seems to be one of the pitfalls of setting up our society such that philanthropy funds the public good as opposed to taxes and government: You're at the mercy of the morality of individual rich people. You can get lucky and have Bill Gates steering the money, providing infectious disease research. You can get unlucky and have guys like Musk aiming the money funnel at themselves. You can also get really unlucky and have a not so wholesome "philanthropist" who donates their billions to a terrible or deadly cause, like a group bent on hate, discrimination, erasing people's rights, ethnic cleansing or some other evil. And we, as citizens, have no say in the matter because "how can you tell someone how to spend their hard earned money?"
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Really guys? He paid more tax than any individual ever last year.
If there’s a legal way for a billionaire to avoid paying tax, of course they’re going to do it.
The problem is how can you protect honest charities and prevent these shenanigans?
There is a lot of FUD in this article, Which ignores how charities and foundations actually work.
It mentions that they are required by law to give away 5%, but then ignores the rest of the laws, which are quite reasonable.
>However, a foundation may set aside funds for up to 60 months for certain major projects. Excess qualifying distributions may be carried forward for a period of five tax years immediately following the tax year in which the excess was created.
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/private-foundation...
How is this news? Foundation setup is one the abcs of rich people. Every rich person has one or more. Seems just a lame attack to mr. Musk.
Given the paywall, I can't read the article, but a post on Twitter[1] appeared in my newsfeed as related coverage. Perhaps it's been updated to take this into account?
US charities seem to be anything but
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People who want to go after billionaires for taxes should be tackling non-profit charity donations. At this point I am not sure non-profits should get such liberal tax status and that includes churches, NGOs, and billionaire charities.