I work with the fine folks at @itep.org. State/fed tax policy, corporate tax, financial accounting, reverse engineering the perfect mapo tofu, go Washington Spirit. Glass half empty but trying to fill it.
Matthew Gardner
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Private firms don't make this disclosure, so we're getting our first glimpse of SpaceX's tax behavior right now. Last year SpaceX claimed $282 million in income tax breaks on their tax forms that the company's leaders believed would likely be disallowed by the IRS if they looked under the hood.
UTB's are income tax breaks that the company believes would likely be disallowed on audit by a fully-functional tax agency. The SEC requires publicly traded companies to keep a running cumulative tally of their UTB's to give shareholders a sense of how aggressive a company's tax avoidance is.
The year before? $300M. Cumulative total $1.9 billion. These are tax breaks that are very much still in play-- tax authorities could look at every last dime of them tomorrow if they had the bandwidth to do so. When the statute of limitations runs out on a tax break, it's no longer counted as a UTB.
Speaking of bandwidth, it looks like the IRS has less of it now that its enforcement staff has been gutted by DOGE and its erstwhile leader.... Elon Musk! So were Musk's efforts to defang the IRS last year based on libertarian principles or venal self-interest?
www.marketwatch.com/story/will-y...
Venality takes many forms, & public attention to the impending SpaceX IPO has largely focused on the absurdly high valuation Musk has attached to this company. But, as is always the case, there's a tax angle too. SpaceX has $1.9 billion in uncertain tax benefits.
www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
Surely I'm not the only person who immediately thought "well of COURSE they picked the lead singer of AC/DC to run the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau."
www.reuters.com/world/us/bri...
Elon Musk and the other current owners of SpaceX have 1.9 billion reasons to want to stop the IRS from doing its job. And Elon Musk appears to have succeeded, in his DOGE capacity, in hamstringing the capacity of the IRS to enforce the law. Gigantic conflict of interest.
www.sec.gov/Archives/edg...
Matthew Gardner
Matthew Gardner
Matthew Gardner
Matthew Gardner
Matthew Gardner
Matthew Gardner
Matthew Gardner
www.marketwatch.com
A new report examines IRS audit activity at the start of the second Trump presidency
