Let’s make Elon Musk the world’s richest man this Christmas!

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“Hi @elonmusk wishing you become the world’s richest man this Xmas by buying every child a $90 gift card with half ur wealth. You’d stop 100m children from going hungry, create 2bn smiles & still be the richest man alive! I’d also settle for a 2% #WealthTax
https://c.org/jnnZhmp6J4

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Why should we tax extreme wealth?

Extreme wealth shrinks our economies, makes us poorer and weakens our democracy.

We can protect people, economies and planet from the harms of extreme wealth by fixing the tax rules that make extreme wealth possible.

That’s what wealth taxes do.

Our economies are supposed to let us earn the wealth we need to lead secure and comfortable lives.

But our tax rules make it easier for the superrich to collect wealth than for the rest of us to earn it.

This has let the superrich collect extreme wealth to the point of making our economies insecure, and making it barely pay to earn a living.

Elon only “earns” a $1 a year

Elon Musk earns a $1 salary as CEO, just like some of the other richest billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison. His wealth doesn’t come from ‘earned wealth’ like yours, it comes from ‘collected wealth’.

Earned wealth is wealth you gain by working. It’s getting paid a salary, income or tips for what you do. Collected wealth is wealth you gain by owning things. It’s getting paid dividends for owing stocks or rent money for owning real estate.

Most people primarily earn their wealth, but the superrich’s wealth is almost entirely collected.

Earned wealth cannot create billionaires. Only collected wealth grows fast enough to do so.

It’s impossible to earn a billion dollars.

The average US worker would have to work 20 times longer than humans have existed – over 7 million years – to earn as much wealth as Elon Musk has collected.

We tax collected wealth a lot less than earned wealth

Most countries tax collected wealth a lot less than earned wealth. And because the wealth of billionaires like Elon Musk is practically entirely collected, billionaires tend to pay half the tax rates everybody else pays on their wealth.

This special tax treatment has helped the superrich quadruple their wealth since the 1980s to extreme levels. Studies directly link this rise in extreme wealth to lower economic productivity, to more households going into debt and to people living shorter lives.

A prestigious report published this year by some of the world’s most respected economists concluded that the rise of extreme wealth is a “threat to democracy”. Over half of millionaires agree.

Wealth taxes protect wealth earners

Countries can raise $2 trillion in tax a year by applying a 2% wealth tax today. That’s enough public money to meet most countries’ climate finance needs, and leave billions to spare for local public services.

But wealth taxes do a lot more than just raise trillions.

Wealth taxes end the special treatment that collected wealth gets over earned wealth. They protect the earner way of life we all rely on from the harms of extreme wealth.

That’s what makes wealth taxes so powerful.

What else can we do?

Make noise about the UN tax convention

Our governments are currently negotiating the biggest shakeup in history to global tax rules at the UN. The outcome of these talks – a world-first UN tax convention – will impact every one of us, wherever we are in the world, and shape people’s lives for generations to come.

The UN tax convention is already on course to deliver huge tax justice wins for all us, including commitments to stop the superrich from cheating on tax and to making sure they’re taxed more effectively.

If you’re not already, get up to speed on the UN talks here and sign up to our newsletter stay updated.

Donate to Tax Justice Network

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Dive deeper

• Read the World Inequality Report 2026
• Read the EU Tax Observatory’s new report on taxing the superrich
• Join the #TaxTheSuperrich global campaign

How’d we calculate the numbers?

The wealth Elon Musk owns stands at $494.5 billion, according to Forbes’ Real Time Billionaire List on 11 December 2025. There are more than 2.4 billion children in the world under the age of 18, according to the United Nations.

Buying every child a $90 gift card would come to a total of $216.8 billion. Subtracting this sum from Elon Musk’s reported $494.5 billion, for illustrative purposes, would leaved Elon with $277.7 billion. That’s enough to keep Elon Musk at the top of list Forbes’ billionaire list in first place, just above Larry Ellison, who’s wealth stood at $276.3 billion according to Forbes on 11 December 2025.