Elon Musk’s Foundation Gave Most Money To His Own Entities

In case you need any more reasons to never buy a Tesla, Bloomberg and The New York Times have a few.

From Bloomberg:

Elon Musk’s charitable foundation ballooned to $9.5 billion in assets last year while handing out $237 million in gifts, most of which went to other entities controlled by the world’s richest person.

The figures are part of the Musk Foundation’s latest tax filing, obtained Thursday by Bloomberg News. The annual snapshot shows the organization got a boost from the millions of Tesla Inc. shares it holds and sent $137 million to Musk’s other nonprofit, The Foundation, which he set up to establish a STEM-focused primary and secondary school.

Bloomberg lists more Musk-related entities that got his money. But even so, Musk’s charitable foundation is remarkably stingy. Bloomberg euphemistically describes it as “muted.’

Though Musk has widened his lead as the richest person ever, his philanthropy remains muted. Over the past three years, he disclosed giving away roughly $559 million in total, with 2023 being the biggest. By comparison, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, a donor-advised fund with $13.6 billion in assets in 2023, made $4.7 billion in grants in that year alone.

The New York Times reported that Musk’s foundation fell far, far short of the amounts required to give away. “Private foundations must donate 5 percent of their assets every year. Elon Musk’s enormous charity missed that standard for three consecutive years,” the paper found. “Mr. Musk’s group has fallen further and further behind. In 2021, his foundation was $41 million short, then $234 million the following year. Now, the hole is deeper still.”

If he doesn’t distribute the money that’s required, Musk “will be required to pay a sizable penalty to the Internal Revenue Service,” according to The Times.

So isn’t it convenient for Musk that he gets to whisper into Donald Trump’s ear what should happen to the IRS?

More from The Times:

The I.R.S. appears to be among Mr. Musk’s early targets as a leader of Mr. Trump’s government efficiency initiative. The tax agency serves as the federal government’s charity regulator and thus oversees Mr. Musk’s foundation.

Last month, Mr. Musk used X, his social media platform, to ask users if the I.R.S.’s budget should be increased, kept the same, decreased or “deleted.” His followers chose “deleted.”