Elon Musk Says There’s No ‘Magical Way’ to Avoid Taxes on His $890 Billion Fortune — ‘If There Were, I Would Know About It’

The richest person on the planet says there's no secret tax escape hatch. If one existed, he figures it would have found him by now.

Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX (SPCX) CEO Elon Musk says his fortune is mostly stock, and it's headed for a long, slow shrink. Taxes take a big bite, a foundation gets most of what's left, and his family ends up with far less than people might expect.

"My so-called wealth is simply a percentage ownership in SpaceX and Tesla, essentially," Musk said on "The Builders" podcast in October 2026. “This is going to be taxed quite heavily, and there's not some magical way to avoid taxes.”

"If there were, I would know about it," he continued.

Musk said the fortune will get whittled down over time.

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"A few generations from now, if money still matters, which I don't think it will, my descendants would have a tiny fraction of what I have," he said.

Paper Billions Still Come With a Real Bill

Most of Musk's net worth is stock, not cash. Forbes put it at $894 billion as of Nov. 12, down from more than $1 trillion in late October after Tesla and SpaceX shares slid.

Musk isn't looking to cash out, either. On the podcast, he said that he needs "sufficient voting control in the companies to still be in charge."

He has made the tax case before. "I have paid over $10B in taxes in a single year, more than anyone in history," Musk wrote in a post on X in May 2026.

Musk wrote that exercising and selling stock options puts his combined federal and state income tax at about 45%. “Then there is another 40% tax paid on my estate when I die," he wrote. "Overall, I will probably end up paying trillions in taxes.”

Not everyone buys that last part. New York Times reporter Teddy Schleifer replied that Musk is "actually highly unlikely to pay the 40% estate tax, if wealth advisers and accountants do their job." Money left to charity is also generally exempt from the federal estate tax, and that matters for a fortune headed mostly to a foundation.

The Foundation Gets the Lion's Share

When the topic turned to what happens after he's gone, Musk said his wealth "mostly goes to sort of a foundation, essentially."

He wants that money to "continue the goals, make life multi-planetary, extend consciousness to the stars, improve sustainable energy on Earth."

Some people have pushed Musk to go further. In July, Nobel Prize-winning economist Daron Acemoglu dared Musk to pledge his roughly $1 trillion fortune to charity by 2036. Musk replied: “I am actually going to do something along these lines!”

Money Might Be Optional Anyway

That "if money still matters" aside wasn't a throwaway line. Musk has said for a while now that money will stop being relevant once artificial intelligence (AI) and robots can produce almost anything.

On the same podcast, he said a future currency would be measured in "fundamental physics metrics like wattage and tonnage."

For now, dollars still count. Much of Musk's fortune is tied to SpaceX, which went public in June 2026 and has faced its share of investor skepticism since.

Even the world's richest man says he can't out-lawyer the tax code. Between the tax bill and a foundation with Mars on its to-do list, his great-grandkids may inherit only a sliver. Musk is betting that by then, a sliver will be plenty.

On the date of publication, Caleb Naysmith did not directly have a position in any of the securities mentioned in this article. All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. For more information please view the Barchart Disclosure Policy here.