Tesla Didn't Pay Any Federal Income Taxes for 5 Years, Got $1M Tax Refund

Is there something nefarious going on?

It seems to be the standard carry-forward loss accounting practice.

Are all tax accountants evil here since they all do this common accounting practice?

Also, the article's tone is not at all biased...

Tesla had a lot of net operating losses from their early history that they are using up with their recent profits. They should start paying corporate income taxes for 2024 or 2025 as long as they remain profitable.

Note that what gets reported for SEC purposes is different from what gets reported to the tax man. You can see a little bit of the tax adjustment detail on page 84 of their 2023 10-K.

However...they report an unusually large change to their valuation allowance that swings them to a loss position for tax purposes. This usually results from their expectation of being able to make use of tax attributes (like NOLs or tax credits) that they previously didn't think they could make use of. This is...unusual...for a company that is claiming that they are sailing into headwinds as their forecasts are worse this year than last and any change to those valuation allowances should have happened last year when times were better.

If you don't have income, you don't pay taxes. Unbelievable. A scandal.

The proverbial "welfare mom?"

A tax refund means you paid too much taxes and the government refunds the excess. The size of the refund means nothing except how good you are in predicting taxes.

Yeah, that's how corporate tax work

They're doing everything within the law.

I don't understand why people are mad at Tesla instead of the government.

Lots of redundant work being done with all these Musk articles. Would be easier just to write one big definitive article titled "all the reasons Elon Musk is a parasite" and be done with it.