Elon Musk’s net worth has surpassed $300 billion, making him the first person on the planet to reach that milestone. It also means the Tesla chief executive is worth tens of billions more than the second-richest person on earth, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.
Musk was worth $311 billion as of Saturday, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
To give Musk’s wealth some perspective, consider that it is greater than the annual GDP of nations such as Finland, Chile and Vietnam and exceeds the market value of Netflix and PayPal, a company that he co-founded.
The surge in Musk’s assets comes as lawmakers are considering a billionaires tax that would take a bite out of the wealth of the nation’s roughly 700 billionaires.
Under the plan, tradable assets in a billionaire’s portfolio would be valued annually. If those assets gained in value, the billionaire would pay a tax on that gain, even if they haven’t sold the asset. Under current law, a gain is only taxed if it is “realized” when its owner sells the asset and makes a profit.
Musk and other billionaires are voicing their displeasure with the proposed tax.
Musk would be liable for perhaps a one-time $50 billion tax hit under the Democratic proposal. Forget it, he said on Twitter.
“My plan,” the SpaceX founder tweeted Thursday about his fortune, “is to use the money to get humanity to Mars and preserve the light of consciousness.”