SpaceX Gets Billions from the Government, Gives Little to Nothing Back in Taxes

25 pretext 16 8/16/2025, 2:49:33 PM nytimes.com ↗

Comments (16)

_acco · 1h ago
Clickbait title.

First, this is narrowly about federal income tax. SpaceX presumably pays plenty of other taxes.

Second, using the projected profits in the article, SpaceX will have exhausted its NOL pool by the end of this year, and so will pay billions in federal income tax next year.

But more important: the whole point of these tax cuts and programs is to let businesses use losses today so they can create value — and tax revenue — tomorrow. Of course, if you take a snapshot after part 1 but before part 2, it will always look like “X gets Y from government and gives nothing back”.

Larrikin · 1h ago
>SpaceX presumably pays plenty of other taxes

Do you have any evidence of this?

_acco · 1h ago
You think they don’t pay payroll tax, sales tax, or property tax?

Operating a business means consuming and producing things, which involves paying taxes.

pavlov · 1h ago
Payroll tax is paid by the employees, not the company.

As for property tax, didn’t SpaceX move to its remote Texas location (“Starbase”) specifically to avoid taxes and regulations and to run its own company town.

_acco · 1h ago
False, payroll taxes are split.

And Texas is famous for its property taxes.

felix_n · 9m ago
Also false, SS and Medicare taxes are split, but federal income tax is not, with the latter typically being higher.
Kranar · 1h ago
The government gets billions back in savings from SpaceX.
dlcarrier · 1h ago
NYT thinks I'm a robot, so I can't read the article, but in general startups running at a loss don't pay taxes until they've generated a return on their investment, so this isn't at all unusual and wouldn't be surprising.
hughes · 1h ago
Is the author arguing that corporations should not be able to carry forward net operating losses? Or that this one specific company shouldn't be allowed to?
xnx · 1h ago
sinharishabh · 1h ago
No company pays taxes if they are in loss.
footlong2 · 1h ago
Citizens gave billions to the government, got little to nothing back (while USAID sent these abroad).
tyre · 1h ago
Why do you believe the US government did USAID?
Bender · 1h ago
The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is literally a government office. I will let June explain. [1] Their logo is a form of psychological warfare that manipulates people into thinking they are somehow related to Aid.

They used to psyop other countries, now they manipulate the masses in the US and EU via social media, chat sites, reddit, chan sites and this site. Someone will say they were defunded by that just means moving to another org that does the same thing. The internet was peaceful for just over a week, same time and period 4chan was offline.

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUOwPcfc1MM [video][27 mins]

mgrep · 1h ago
I guess they forgot the time we paid $100k+/person to get to the ISS? 90% space payload goes through SpaceX and that is the biggest national security boost that frankly, NASA or the US govt could've never achieved.
msgodel · 1h ago
I doubt anyone is going to cry over it.

Cut spending.