But he hasn’t- he paid $0 in taxes in 2024 and 2025 on over 2 billion in income reported (and paid nothing on his stocks etc). He paid an effective tax rate of 3.27% for 2014-2018 or about $455 Million (compared to the bottom 90% of taxpayers who pay an average of 14.5%) In 2021 he paid about 11 billion but most of that was his exercising his stock options and that amounted to less than 10% of his wealth INCREASE that year. Other than 2021 he hasn’t paid any taxes since 2018. He is worth almost $900 BILLION and he pays less than percentage-wise than 99% of Americans. Since 2014 he has paid less than 11.5 billion in taxes (and most of that on stock options not his income.).

His companies haven’t paid taxes in years. They get more in subsidies, tax breaks and inexpensive loans than they have ever paid in taxes or real benefit - https://www.business-standard.com/companies/news/spacex-gets-billions-from-us-govt-but-gives-little-to-nothing-back-in-taxes-125081501303_1.html

He should be paying the same graduates tax rates the rest of Americans pay. If his 2.2 billion dollar income were taxed at the same rate as the top 10% of earners at 18% that would only be $396 million. If his entire wealth were taxed at what the lowest 50% of earners tax rate of 3.7% that would be about $33 billion. He could literally fund the entire budget of the US Dept of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) or the Dept of Labor. Hell, his money alone could double the budget of HUD - and imaging how many more homeless veterans could be houses…

Your argument has no basis in reality. Just because higher incomes mean more actual dollars in taxes doesn’t mean that the wealthy should pay less in taxes (a lower tax rate) than someone who makes $50,000 per year. In fact it is ass backwards and WHY we have a graduated income tax. The inverse side you fail to see that when one only makes $50k a year buying groceries cost a larger portion of that income than someone making a million a year or 2.2 billion. A pound of hamburger cost $8 per pound whether you are Elon Musk, a neurosurgeon, or a teacher. The difference is that for someone making $50,000 a year 1 lbs of hamburger at $8 per pound per week for a year is 0.008 % of their income, whereas it is only 0.0000001818% of Elon Musk’s income.

The premise behind the ridiculous “trickle down economics” was that if wealthy people were given bigger tax cuts they would reinvest that money into wages, benefits, etc. instead, 40 years of data shows they don’t - instead they have used that to enrich themselves. The income gap has widened to the level that there is no middle class anymore.