President Joe Biden’s Twitter account posted a questionable statistic on Saturday about how much tax American billionaires pay.
“Look, I believe it’s best to find a way to be a billionaire in the event you can earn it, but just pay your justifiable share,” Biden’s tweet read. “I believe you must pay a minimum tax of 25%. It’s about basic fairness.”
The tweet included a graphic of a Biden quote that said: “You understand the typical tax billionaires pay? Three percent. No billionaire ought to be paying a lower tax than any individual working as a schoolteacher or a firefighter.”
However it is unclear where the three% figure got here from, and it contradicts figures the White House has issued previously.
In February, the White House issued a fact sheet called “The Biden Economic Plan Is Working,” which calculated how much tax the U.S. could collect if it counted unrealized gains – a possible profit on an unsold asset – as income.
“In a typical 12 months, billionaires pay a mean tax rate of just 8%,” the very fact sheet read. Factoring in unrealized gains is the explanation for the lower statistic.
“Using the present definition of taxable income, really wealthy people pay a mean federal income tax rate within the mid-20s,” Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center senior fellow Howard Gleckman told PolitiFact in July. “If you desire to include unrealized gains in your denominator, because the White House does, the typical rate would go way down.”
One other White House figure from 2021 gave an 8% figure quite than the three% one Biden recently cited.
“The evaluation from OMB and CEA economists estimates that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in America paid a mean of just 8.2 percent of their income – including income from their wealth that goes largely untaxed – in Federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018. That’s a lower rate than many odd Americans pay,” the 2021 post read.
In response, Twitter CEO Elon Musk disputed Biden’s tax claim.
“I paid 53% taxes on my Tesla stock options (40% Federal & 13% state), so I should be lifting the typical!” the South African entrepreneur wrote. “I also paid more income tax than anyone ever within the history of Earth for 2021 and can do this again in 2022.”
“Can be curious to listen to how these other ‘billionaires’ are so good at avoiding taxes!” Musk added in one other tweet, after asking Twitter’s Community Notes feature to fact-check the statement.