This is something I believe the Tea Party on the right and Progressives on the Left can agree, billionaires do NOT need tax breaks so they can become richer. Elon Musk, who has taken tens of millions of YOUR tax dollars to build $100,000 cars for the ultra-rich, now wants more.
He has designed a space vehicle—and wants YOU to finance it—so he can be richer. By the wat, Musk is also a major Democrat donor—the Party that believes no one pays enough in taxes—except the friends and donors of Democrat office holders and candidates. Musk is the poster child for crony capitalism.
“The reasoning for the bill — besides the obvious motivation of keeping and expanding jobs in California — is that rockets shouldn’t be taxed because they don’t stay in California. They don’t even stay on Earth.
The only opposition to the tax exemption bill comes from the Santa Clara County Assessor, who has argued that Assembly Bill 777 creates winners and losers by extending special tax rules to large corporations with money to lobby legislators.”
Gov. Brown to decide on tax break for companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX
A SpaceX rocket stands in Cape Canaveral, Fla. in 2012. Sitting on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk is a bill that would give SpaceX and other commercial space companies a 10-year exemption on property taxes. The reasoning for the bill — besides keeping and expanding jobs in California — is that rockets shouldn’t be taxed because they don’t stay in California.
Allen Young, Sacramento Business Journal, 4/28/14
California’s manufacturers like it; tax collectors don’t. Sitting on Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk is a bill that would give Elon Musk‘s SpaceX and other commercial space companies a 10-year exemption on property taxes. The law, Assembly Bill 777, would target propulsion systems that are shot into space.
“This is something that will create tremendous ripple effects in the entire manufacturing economy in California,” said Gino DiCaro, a spokesman for the California Manufacturers and Technology Association.
The reasoning for the bill — besides the obvious motivation of keeping and expanding jobs in California — is that rockets shouldn’t be taxed because they don’t stay in California. They don’t even stay on Earth.
The only opposition to the tax exemption bill comes from the Santa Clara County Assessor, who has argued that Assembly Bill 777 creates winners and losers by extending special tax rules to large corporations with money to lobby legislators.
The legislation by Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi, a Torrance Democrat, is backed by SpaceX, the commercial space flight company headed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk of Tesla.
Tesla, the luxury electric carmaker, already has received millions of dollars in tax breaks from the state of California.
In news that may be related to the SpaceX bill, Tesla recently leased a large facility in Lathrop and before that, added California to a list of states in the running for a planned megafactory.
In 2013, the Los Angeles County Assessor hit SpaceX with a $2 million tax bill by for two propulsion systems. That issue is currently being debated in the courts.
The manufacturer’s association doesn’t share that view.
“When the space industry scales up here, hardworking families win,” DiCaro said.
I'm sorry but I could not disagree more! California needs as many Aerospace jobs that it can get! Would you rather see even MORE high technology great paying jobs leave the state? Look what happened in the San Fernando Valley, Downey, and Burbank and many other cities across Southern California.. all the large production facilities that once provided tens of thousands of high paying, full time jobs with great medical benefits, have been torn down as they companies down-sized and moved out of state and replaced with what? - retail stores! Sure, Elon himself personally does not the break, but if that company is blazing a trail to the future and providing thousands of of high tech jobs to the Southland, then I'm all for a tax break that keeps them here!
April 29, 2014 at 10:58 am