Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has been called out by his multimillionaire son in a Twitter exchange involving Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, and his payment of taxes.
“Why does he hate us / the American dream so much?!?!?!?!" tweeted younger Wyden who is a successful hedge fund manager and isn’t registered with either political party, according to a Forbes report.
“Reality is: most legislators have never built anything… so I guess it’s easier to mindlessly and haphazardly try and tear stuff down,” his tweet continued.
“Thankfully, I think I can compound faster than my dad and his cronies can confiscate it…” he added showcasing a group of ticker symbols.
Musk’s tweet in question that Sen. Wyden commented on was a poll about unrealized gains and tax avoidance.
Out of a 3,519,252 total vote count, a majority, 57.9 percent, voted in the affirmative.
Musk said in the follow-up he would abide by the results of the poll and that he does not “take cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.”
“Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll. It’s time for the Billionaires Income Tax,” Sen. Wyden said on Twitter.
Musk shot back at the senator with a crude reply.
Sen. Wyden, the Senate Finance Committee chairman along with fellow Democrats, introduced the tax proposal to levy fines on billionaires even when their stock holdings are not realized, that is, stocks would be taxed whether they’re sold or not. Democratic politicians have put forward the idea as a way to fund their trillion-dollar infrastructure bill.
Musk had earlier slammed the proposal claiming that the bill would start with billionaires and it'll only then be a matter of time before legislators go after average citizens.
A deep value investor, Adam Wyden’s Miami-based ADW Capital Partners manages around $350 million. He prefers micro- and small-cap stocks that are mostly ignored by analysts and large hedge funds.
Since the fund’s inception in 2011, it has returned back to investors around 12 times their initial investment, which comes to roughly double that of the S&P 500. Adam Wyden’s current net worth is around $100 million.
As for his father’s radical tax proposals, “I don’t think I have any sway over my father,” he told Forbes.
Initially based out of New York, he moved his entire operations down to Florida like many billionaire investors who have made the sunshine state their home during the past decade. Florida is a low tax state.
