How Tesla Pays $0 Taxes (Genius)

Tesla Paid $0 in Federal Income Tax Last Year. Also in 2022, 21, 20, 19, and 18.

But over those years they reported $6.7 billion dollars in profit.

So how did they do it?

It comes down to 3 tax breaks.

Starting with the smallest (3), we have the tax credits for electric vehicles. This is likely in the hundreds of millions but not billions. The US government wants to encourage adoption.

Next (2) we have something called accelerated depreciation. Typically the cost of physical investments have to be spread out over multiple years. But Tesla spends billions on gigafactories and R&D. And because they reinvest so much, the US allows them to write off costs faster than usual. This is likely in the low single digit billions per year.

Now at number 1 we have losses carried forward. Over many years Tesla has accumulated billions in losses. It was deeply unprofitable. And the US allows companies to carry those losses forward to offset future profits. It's totally legal that...

Sources: https://x.com/DefiyantlyFree/status/1888402886964486526