Elon Musk dismisses Bernie Sanders's 5% wealth tax, says 99% of his trillion-dollar fortune is in stock — not cash

Elon Musk dismisses Bernie Sanders's 5% wealth tax, says 99% of his trillion-dollar fortune is in stock — not cash

Becky Robertson

Fri, September 11, 2026 at 6:30 PM GMT+3 5 min read

Elon Musk's elevation to trillionaire status this summer has been a PR nightmare for the already divisive figure, who has come to represent the elite, who many resent for accruing riches and wielding influence as the Americans face increasing socioeconomic insecurity.

To ease the worsening burden of the cost of living — and the large national debt — multiple levels of government have contemplated more taxation of the nation's highest earners in recent months.

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From Virginia's millionaire levy and Rhode Island's "Fair Share" duty on high-value assets to federal acts targeting billionaires, such as those pushed by lawmakers like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, "Tax the rich" has become a common call to action.

Sanders, for one, has singled out Musk specifically to drive home the need for the 5% charge the senator has suggested imposing on the ultra-wealthy.

While noting in a recent X post that the top 1% of wealthiest Americans now own an eye-popping $54 trillion in wealth — 468 times more than the bottom 50% of residents — he bemoaned that "One man, Elon Musk, owns more than the bottom half combined."

"This is what I mean when I talk about oligarchy," he wrote.

But, Musk was quick to clap back and argue that Sanders was missing the fact that most billionaires are relatively cash poor, with the vast majority of their funds tied up in ever-fluctuating assets like stocks. For Musk, stake in the companies he's built and helped succeed comprises more than a whopping 99% of his fortune.

As he retorted on X this week, "I have stock in SpaceX and Tesla, not some big pile of cash."

Musk has previously quantified his cash holdings as less than 0.1% of his total net worth, also pointing out that his employees receive stock options and thus benefit from increased valuations, too, as do retail investors such as pension funds that have a stake.

The uber-rich — but only on paper

Billionaires like Mark Cuban and Jimmy Donaldson, who goes by Mr. Beast on YouTube, have echoed the same point, with the latter telling the Wall Street Journal earlier this year that he has "negative money right now" and is in fact "borrowing money, that's how little money I have."

Like Musk, Wa — the world's biggest YouTuber — has billions on paper, but most of it is equity in the eponymous entertainment and goods company he founded.

To Musk's credit, his businesses have boosted the US economy by hundreds of billions of dollars in the last five years alone, and provided hundreds of thousands of people with jobs, with his success a reflection of his firms' success — which also extends to the stock market and everyday investors.

"As my companies do more and more useful things, their value increases proportionate to their projected usefulness. All shareholders benefit along the way, including most retirement programs," he said in his Sept. 5 post.

Cuban, too, has argued that while much of the wealth of the richest among us is thanks to stock market gains, these gains are a direct result of those in charge of those entities, and also serve to benefit the 62% of Americans who own shares in something.

"The reason anyone gets insanely rich is almost always because of the stock market. It's certainly how Elon Musk did," Cuban wrote on social media in June.

"And the reason they get rich from the stock market is because 150 million Americans decided they wanted to own shares of stocks directly, or through their retirement plans, or through other approaches as a way of building their net worth and trying to create a better life for themselves."

Increasing taxes on the rich isn't a be-all, end-all solution

In 2025 and 2026, more than 15 states proposed or put into effect new surcharges on wealth, along with the proposed federal legislation. The rise of anti-capitalist sentiment and billionaire hate has been palpable in that time, especially among younger generations, even if their habits conflict with their attitudes, if public ire seems somewhat inconsistently applied, and if many affluent people are well-deserving of what they have.

Squeezing more out of those worth unfathomable amounts can feel like one potential, not to mention appealing, solution for funding schools, infrastructure and the bank accounts of individuals with less.

But, as some have pointed out, even if we taxed billionaires' earnings 100%, at current congressional spending rates — of about $19.2 billion a day — the Fed would run through it all within about four months. Seizing and liquidating all of the existing wealth and assets of the nation's billionaires right at this moment would cover these expenses for not even three quarters of one year.

Musk is among those who have noted what a small impact a 100% billionaire's tax would have on America's now-$40 trillion debt and on the average person. As one budget expert told Fortuneat the beginning of this year, wealth taxes generally "are not really a super efficient way of raising money over time, and it also often doesn't actually raise as much revenue as people think."

This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com under the title: Elon Musk dismisses Bernie Sanders's 5% wealth tax, says 99% of his trillion-dollar fortune is in stock — not cash

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