Program:  Cavuto Coast to Coast
Date:  12/29/2021
Station:  Fox Business News
Time:  12:00PM

DAVID ASMAN: Well, Elon Musk selling yet another billion dollars worth of Tesla shares nearing his 10 percent target, Musk is expected to pay what is likely to be the largest individual tax bill in U.S. history. It’s nearing about $11 billion right now. Let’s bring back Scott Martin and Hal Lambert. So Hal? Elizabeth Warren still calling him a freeloader. It’s hard to call $11 billion free, is it?

HAL LAMBERT: Well, absolutely, I think Elon Musk did this deliberately. He’s the richest person in the world. He made a conscious decision to pay the highest tax bill that’s ever been collected by an from an individual in the history of the world. This has nothing to do with his view of Tesla stock, in my opinion. And I think ultimately, you know, this calls out the hypocrisy on the left because, you know, if you look at what’s happening, he could have borrowed against these shares and never paid tax. He could borrow at one percent or probably less. And that’s what a lot of these guys do. They ultimately never pay tax. They didn’t turn around and give it to a foundation, their own foundation when they die, and that money escapes tax altogether. Great. I think we ought to start taxing this if we if we looked out and said, Look, you know, Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett said he’s going to leave all his money to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, so he’s going to skate off and pay no tax when he dies. I don’t think that should happen. I mean, maybe we had to look at anything above 500 million is tax. Just like an estate tax, you pay 50 percent on that and then the rest can be left to the foundation. But ultimately, these go to these far left foundations that then are turned around and used to change the policies of the country and destroy the country. Well, it’s a circular game.

ASMAN: It is a circular game. It’s got the thing is, I’m not going to cry for help for the richest man in the world. Obviously, he’s still got billions left over. But again, to use a lie in order to make an ideological point, it’s just it’s just bad. It’s bad politics and it’s bad policy because, as Hal said, sometimes it leads to just the wrong kind of policy.

SCOTT MARTIN: It opens up Pandora’s box where you find out what’s really going on. Now this is going to be a Fox News alert. I agree with Senator Karen. I mean, Warren in respect of Elon Musk and some of these billionaires. Oops. And small business owners David and Hal don’t pay their fair share of tax. They pay more than their fair share because if you look at the tax code and look at what it does for, say, half of American households where they don’t pay any federal tax, a lot of those folks are some of the freeloaders that are out there. So if Elon Musk’s is paying what he’s paying, we should be thanking him for doing that. And like Hal said, doing what he’s doing right now and having Senator Warren attack him for it is making her look bad because it’s coming out in the wash as to what’s really happening here.

ASMAN: The top one percent pay 40 percent of all the federal income taxes, and you just can’t avoid that.

MARTIN: And that’s 20 percent.

ASMAN: Yeah, well, we’ll see.

LAMBERT: It’s at the top and the top one percent only collect 20 percent of the income, so they’re paying double in taxes of what they collect.

ASMAN: HAL, that’s a terrific statistic. All right, guys. Thank you very much. Great to see you have a wonderful new year.