A recent study found that 35 companies paid their top five executives more than they paid in Federal income tax across the five year span from 2018 to 2022. American automaker Tesla was by far the worst offender, as it actually netted $1 million in refunds from the government in that period, while doling out among the highest executive pay in history via a compensation package worth $2.5 billion. Despite Elon Musk’s enormous wealth having largely been built on the back of Tesla and its inflated stock valuation, the study claims Tesla has never paid one shiny cent in Federal income tax.
The study lists other notable companies alongside Tesla, including T-Mobile, Ford Motor Company, and Netflix, but Tesla’s executive compensation so vastly outstrips the others on the list that it accounts for more than a quarter of the $9.5 billion in executive pay for the full list of 35 companies.
Ford, the fifth-worst company on the list paid a comparatively tiny $355 million to its five top execs, while paying $121 million in Federal income tax for that same five year period. Now, $121 million is hardly Ford’s fair share when compared to the $7.8 billion in corporate profit it earned within that period, but it’s orders of magnitude more than Tesla.
We, the American people, are being fleeced by corporate and executive greed. Tesla earns hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts, preferential government loans, federal and state incentives, and countless kickbacks, all the while paying nothing back to the country that all but assured its current level of success.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is currently listed as the second richest human being with a reported net worth of $207.9 billion. Tesla sold approximately 2.1 percent of the cars sold globally in 2023.