just came across this wild claim from elon about how he paid so much in taxes one year that it literally broke the IRS computer. apparently had too many digits and they needed to update their software to process it lol

but here's where it gets interesting - between 2014 and 2018 he actually paid around $455 million in taxes on like $1.52 billion in reported income. yet in 2018 specifically? zero federal income tax. how much did elon pay in taxes that year? nothing, because of losses, deductions, and how the tax code treats unrealized gains

the thing is most of his wealth is just sitting in tesla stock, not actual salary. so when you're asking how much did elon pay in taxes in any given year, the answer depends entirely on whether he sold stock or not. 2021 for example - huge tax bill after dumping tesla shares. but when the stock just sits there doing nothing? technically no income, no tax

it's actually a pretty wild loophole when you think about it. billionaires can have insane paper wealth but barely pay taxes until they actually convert it to cash. then suddenly it's massive bills all at once. that's probably what happened in whatever year broke the IRS system - just a random year where everything lined up and he owed an enormous amount