Biden’s Twitter account is fact-checked for claim US billionaires on average only pay 3% tax after Elon Musk disputed the statement saying he personally paid ‘more income tax than anyone ever in history of Earth’
- Biden said billionaires pay 3% tax on average after claiming it was 8% last month
- Both Twitter and fact-checking services have disputed the White House’s claims
A tweet from President Biden has been fact-checked and labelled ‘incorrect’ after the White House claimed the average billionaire paid three percent in tax.
The president’s account tweeted out a graphic of Biden on Saturday with a quote that read: ‘You know the average tax billionaires pay? Three percent. No billionaire should be paying a lower tax than somebody working as a schoolteacher or a firefighter.’
Accompanying text said: ‘Look, I think you should be able to be a billionaire if you can earn it, but just pay your fair share. I think you ought to pay a minimum tax of 25 percent. It’s about basic fairness.’
But it is not known where the three per cent figure originated from as it contradicts previous White House data and independent analysis.
Twitter boss Elon Musk also weighed in, questioning the tweeting and claiming he ‘paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth for 2021 and will do that again in 2022’.
The president’s account tweeted out a graphic of Biden on Saturday with a quote that read: ‘You know the average tax billionaires pay? Three percent.’
Beneath Biden’s tweet, a rather embarrassingly placed ‘added context’ tab discredits the 3 percent claim, labelling it as ‘incorrect’
‘Look, I think you should be able to be a billionaire if you can earn it, but just pay your fair share’, Biden – pictured walking into the White House on Friday – was quoted as saying
Beneath Biden’s tweet, a rather embarrassingly placed ‘added context’ tab discredited the three percent claim, labelling it as ‘incorrect’.
‘This is incorrect,’ it reads. ‘Avg income tax rate in 2020 was 13.6 percent. Top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 25.99 percent avg rate, more than eight times higher than the 3.1 percent avg rate paid by the bottom half of taxpayers. It increased from 20.1 percent/2019 to 22.2 percent/2020.’
Despite the recent claim, Biden’s tweet also contradicts data from the White House released just last month.
In a February release, the White House said: ‘In a typical year, billionaires pay an average tax rate of just eight percent.’ The data was taken from a factsheet titled: ‘The Biden Economic Plan Is Working’
Again, in 2021, the White House gave the same eight percent figure. The White House statement said: ‘The analysis from OMB and CEA economists estimates that the wealthiest 400 billionaire families in America paid an average of just 8.2 percent of their income – including income from their wealth that goes largely untaxed – in Federal individual income taxes between 2010 and 2018.’
Twitter CEO Elon Must also stepped in to dispute the figure.
The Tesla and SpaceX billionaire said he paid 53 percent in taxes on his Tesla stock options to the federal and state treasuries.
Musk claimed he paid ‘paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth for 2021 and will do that again in 2022’
Musk said he agreed that everyone should pay taxes and joked that he would be ‘curious to hear how these other ”billionaires” are so good at avoiding taxes’
Twitter CEO Elon Must also stepped in to dispute the White House figure. Musk is pictured in February 2022 at SpaceX’s Starbase facility near Boca Chica Village in South Texas
Musk also claimed he paid ‘paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth for 2021 and will do that again in 2022’.
He said he agreed that everyone should pay taxes and joked that he would be ‘curious to hear how these other ”billionaires” are so good at avoiding taxes.’
The Poynter Institute’s PolitiFact looked to shed light on the statistics. The fact-checker has said even Biden’s eight per cent figure does not align with actual figures.
PolitiFact said: ‘Both the three percent figure of the eight percent figure refer to calculations made under a theoretical proposal. Under today’s laws, the 25 highest-earning billionaires paid an average tax rate of 16 percent.’
DailyMail.com has approached the White House for comment regarding the tweet.
But this is not the first time that White House claims have been fact-checked on Twitter.
In November, a Twitter context box questioned a claim from the White House that the Biden administration was responsible for the biggest ever annual reduction in the deficit.
A note beneath pointed out that the difference between the federal government’s income and expenditure was still the fourth biggest in history.
Last year officials also had to delete a tweet that took credit for a record increase in social security payments after users pointed out that it was an automatic raise based on high inflation.
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