A few weeks ago, Elon Musk made public that Spacex’s income was on their way to overcome NASA’s annual budget, a milestone that showed the spectacular commercial success of Starlink. Now, an investigation of the New York Times has revealed the least known face of that success: Spacex has been not paying taxes for more than 20 years.
The other type of engineering that Spacex makes. Although it is not obliged to present results, because it does not quote on a stock market, the company’s internal documents show that Spacex accumulated almost 5.4 billion dollars in tax losses until the end of 2021. Thanks to the US fiscal legislation, these losses can be used to compensate for future benefits, which in practice means that the Elon Musk company has avoided the payment of billions of dollars in federal taxes on income.
The situation is even more favorable for Spacex since 2017 for a change introduced during the first presidency of Donald Trump, which eliminated the 20 -year limit for the use of tax losses. This allows Spacex to apply almost 3,000 million dollars of its losses against future benefits indefinitely.
A company that grew with public money. The paradox that is most commented on these days in the American press is that Spacex owes a good part of its growth to NASA contracts and the United States Department of Defense, among other government agencies. Some of these contracts were crucial at the beginning of Spacex.
According to an analysis of the Washington Post, Elon Musk companies have received at least 38,000 million dollars in public contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits in the last two decades. In the case of Spacex, which was founded in 2000, almost all its income came from federal contracts until the arrival of Starlink. In 2020, almost 84% of its income, a figure that in 2021 stood at 76%.
The golden eggs. With Starlink, the SpaceX business is more buoyant than ever. The satellite Internet network has more than 6 million subscribers and has become the main source of income of the company, surpassing the rocket division. Thanks to Starlink, Spacex plans to enter 15.5 billion dollars in 2025, a figure that is dangerously approaching the annual NASA budget, which by 2026 is estimated at 18.8 billion.
This growth has triggered the SpaceX assessment up to 350,000 million dollars, making it the largest non -quoted company in the United States. But you can still use those tax losses to be exempt from paying taxes.
