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Tesla Gets $34 Million Tax Break, Adds Capacity For 35,000 More Cars
cartechboy writes "The state of California will give Tesla Motors a $34.7 million tax break to expand the company's production capacity for electric cars, state officials announced yesterday. Basically, Tesla won't have to pay sales taxes on new manufacturing equipment worth up to $415 million. The added equipment will help Tesla more than double the number of Model S sedans it builds, as well as assemble more electric powertrains for other car makers. In addition to continued Model S production, Tesla plans to introduce the Model X electric crossover in late 2014, as well as a sub-$40,000 car — tentatively called Model E — that could debut as soon as the 2015 Detroit Auto Show. It turns out California is one of the few states to tax the purchase of manufacturing equipment — but the state grants exemptions for 'clean-tech' companies."
Elon's next company should be called "FusionX" that creates portable breeder reactors. It would be a nice addition to his current portfolio of cars and rockets.
The rest of us are grateful for your generous contributions to our new luxury cars.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Unless you value your environment nothing, why shouldn't there be a financial reward for companies that reduce the harm on it, either directly or indirectly?
Big corporations are evil because they don't pay their taxes unless it's our pet company in which case it's all wine and roses.
This is great news for me and my shares in TSLA. :D
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
Another business that can't survive without tax payer money to help keep the costs down on a vehicle that only wealthy folks can afford. Brilliant.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Let's throw money at the company that does nothing but produce luxury cars for the ultra-wealthy. Fuck you government, and fuck you Tesla.
Regulate and tax the hell out of companies, then when they start going bust as a result or just leaving the state, start handing out big subsidies (to the ones who lobby the most) to get some back. Wonderful. California bankrupt in how many years ?
Surprised no one posted that Tesla will have Models identified as S, E and X when these are all rolled out.
With a value-added tax (VAT), if you buy $150 of intermediary stuff, and use it to produce $200 of stuff, the tax is levied on $200 in total value, which is charged as $150 on the first sale and $50 to the second sale. If you buy equipment that is producing goods or more equipment, you only pay sales tax on the incremental value added, not on the cost of the machinery.
With a sales tax, you either charge on both sales for the full amount, in which case a $200 product has paid sales tax on $350 worth of sales in this example, or you do special-case exemptions, such as exempting "manufacturing equipment" from sales tax entirely, as some states do. Sales taxes are also more brittle because since the entire tax on charged on the final retail transaction, it encourages black-market no-sales-tax sales.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Are you kidding? "A cut of business transactions between two independent parties" describes nearly all taxes.
Could it be that the US just wants get rid of the arab oil dependency by sponsoring tesla?
Selling carbon credits to California: Crony capitalism at its finest.
Why is it if some guy in Arkansas drops $70K on a Ford F450 "dually" he's just a hard-working good ol' boy, but if someone in California buys a Tesla they're they wealthy elite? (I'd never spend over $30K on a car myself, but I just find the comparison interesting).
Big corporations are "evil" when they avoid paying for their externalities by corrupting our representatives through regulatory capture.
Here, we have no income state (Washington State), only sales tax.
And, most of our energy is a mix of hydroelectric, solar, and wind (yes, solar is very effective here).
While I think moving to all electric vehicles in green states like ours is a good thing, and cheaper than gas (about 1/10th the cost), not sure if they should get a sales tax exemption since the only people buying Tesla cars (which have a showroom 20 blocks south of me) are rich people who generally avoid paying even 1/3 as much percentage of tax as the other 99 percent of citizens that pay the bills.
Same goes for fleet purchases - note that education and state/municipal don't pay sales taxes (and never have).
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Every tax break handed out to corporations is just more proof that capitalism doesn't work.
...is that it compounds so much that politicians can suck enormous quantities of money out of the free-market economy while talking about small percentages and most people never understand just how much of the cost of everything they buy is an embedded tax. The politicians LOVE this and they are able to use the piles of money rewarding their "friends" and the industries they favor. Gullible, ignorant, citizens then look at prices of things in non-VAT countries and suspect that something is being subsidized.... sort of the way so many Europeans have been so propagandized and over-taxed that they think there's something wrong with the much lower gas prices in the U.S. (where the price has not been artificially driven-up by massive taxation as a tool for manipulating the public)
middle-class people paying taxes so politicians can help rich people buy luxury second cars, which enable those subsidized wealthy eco-phonies to sneer at the middle class for hurting the environment with their "dirty" cars. Of course, it's just a coincidence that the subsidies also help the companies of campaign donors...... that probably has nothing to do with it.....
Very few wealthy people will have electric cars as their ONLY vehicle, so these are second, third, fourth(?) cars for many buyers. There just are not a lot of rich people who are going to sit there waiting 12 hours for a car to charge when they're in the mood to go out for a drive, dinner, etc or need to go tend to some business. We don't even know yet just how "green" these cars really are...... where will their electricity come from for most of their operational lives? Coal? What was required to make them? (lots of rare-Earth minerals which required more energy and generated more pollution in their extraction and processing?) and what ultimately will become of these cars and their batteries when they are removed from service? (traditional car recycling is far less neat and clean than industry people and shiny brochures would portray, and we have no evidence that recycling a Tesla will live-up to any hype about being any better)
In the flyover states, we have people who actually work for a living instead of going to some office building and pushing buttons on a keyboard to suck dollars out of those who work for a living. You know, we create things like breakfast, lunch, and dinner, shingles and lumber and drywall, Keep going to your office job and feeling valuable, I'll keep feeding you.
Put a DC ammeter/voltmeter on an AC wire.
Work out what the power is from that measure. It under-reads, compared to heating done to a resistive element heating water (for an example)
The simplest explanation is that the measure of power was done in exactly this way.
Remember: NDAs are even stronger protection than patents, and we know submarine patents exist and "work" to protect the invention even if it's not widely seen, so there's no reason to require it be a black box.
Not even Pons and Fleichmann insisted on their apperatus be considered a black box, because they, at least, were genuinely misled by their own hopes and expectations.
This points to this dude being a scam artist.
Ford was all about the rich back around 191x..... In less than 10 years he made cars for the middle and lower classes....
I see Tesla doing the same thing.... it has only been only 5 years... give it a rest.
There is a lot of hate around Tesla because Musk is upsetting the old applecart.... well that applecart needs to be upset.....
Or would you rather be hauling the family in a buggy pulled by horses.... if so, theres a place for you... in Pennsylvania.
Tesla is designing, building & selling the most desired American car in decades, which has garnered awards & praise from numerous automotive experts.
What's all the bellyaching about? Even if they only manage to make cars for the next 5 yrs, the $34 million a drop in the bucket for the revenue from the ~75000 extra cars they would manufacture, probably not even 1%.
Tesla has 1000 factory workers producing 20,000 cars. Even if they only added 100 new workers @ $50k each, that's $5 million in additional salaries per year.
Ignoring the revenue from additional auto sales, the stimulus of that tax break to the local economy would be net positive in just a few years.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body