America's Road to Fame

Chapter 219 Brother, Are You Short of Money Again?

After Sheila Reis rushed to Silicon Valley, as William Chen's financial advisor, she reported to him the final tax return.

Before mid-April, it was the final period of tax declaration for last year's income. However, William Chen's financial team had already started sorting out his accounts as early as New Year's Day. This time, the tax payment was mainly from Meta Investment Company. income.

William Chen first accepted Alicia's suggestion to invest almost all income and consumption in the name of the company, that is, Meta Investment Company, and the company did not pay dividends, so his personal income tax was not involved. Not much, especially since his early investment income has been duly taxed.

Moreover, during the subprime mortgage crisis, most of the income of Meta Investment Company was cashed out after New Year’s Day. The income before New Year’s Day was mainly from the cashing out of subprime mortgage bonds and the short sale of gold futures by the No. 1 Fund. More than 200 billion US dollars.

Under normal circumstances, if the corporate tax rate is below 35%, at least 60 billion to 70 billion US dollars in taxes need to be paid. However, because it involves fund investment, no dividends means that William Chen still holds the fund. Many tax credits for consumption and debt, after the operation of the tax team, only need to pay about 40 billion U.S. dollars in taxes, saving nearly 40% of taxes. Financial advisor, and what it means to form a financial team.

However, this year's taxation needs to be planned even more, because up to now, the estimated profit of Meta Investment Company has exceeded 300 billion US dollars, but with the establishment of William Chen's Kettering Foundation and the development of overseas business, there will be more More tax avoidance methods are available.

Just like the tax avoidance method commonly used by multinational companies, it is the "Irish-Dutch sandwich" method, and multinational companies including Microsoft and Apple use this method to avoid taxes.

The main reason is that the United States collects taxes globally, and the tax rate is extremely high, much higher than that of European countries such as the United Kingdom. Therefore, the overseas income of multinational companies can be structured in low-tax countries or even tax-free countries. In Ireland, this tax is relatively low. Countries with low tax rates and very loose control over profit transfers also set up a branch to avoid taxation by transferring overseas receivable profits from companies in Ireland to branches in low-tax or tax-free countries.

The corporate tax rate in the United States is usually around 35%. In this way, the tax rate can be reduced to about 20%, which fully reduces the tax payable by nearly half, and this method is not like the tax avoidance of offshore companies. , is perfectly legal.

……

"They're so cute..."

Ember hugged a little boy and said to William Chen, at this time there was a maternal smile on her face.

Hehe, William Chen sneered in his heart, a little boy is very cute, try to face five...

At this time, William Chen and Ember Heard were at Musk's home, in Silicon Valley in mid-March, the sun was shining at noon, and they were sitting on the lawn in the yard with Musk's family.

I have to say that William Chen admires Talulah a little bit. You know, Musk now has 5 children, er, all sons.

She is a delicate star, and it is quite rare to be able to help Musk take care of these children.As we all know, Musk is a workaholic, working at least 70 hours a week, so there is not much free time.

It seems that Talulah broke up with him later, the main reason is that Musk was too busy, and the two of them didn't spend much time together, and this kind of technology madman also needs more contributions from people around him, such as helping him take care of his life and His 5 children.

In an interview at the time, Musk talked about that he thought it would be a lot for a woman to accompany him for 10 hours a week.

Of Musk’s five children, the two older ones are already six years old, and the three younger ones are only four years old. He had them twice. That’s right, one twin and one triplet, all with him His ex-wife obtained it through medical technology, because the first child they normally had died early at the age of 7 months, so sad, both of them had children through medical technology afterwards, twice five , is also great.

But at this time, Talulah and Musk were just newly married, with sweet smiles on their faces, and Ember and Ember looked at the children while chatting.

Musk and William Chen walked aside, sat on chairs, and began to chat about the company.

"I heard you kicked out the CEO of Twitter? I think it's a good job. I use Twitter a lot. To be honest, their app sucks. The mediocre crap should be gone long ago."

Musk really dared to say it, but his character is like this. Not only did he dare to say it, but he also drove the founder of Tesla out of the company. William Chen said with a smile:

"There was no suitable candidate before, but this time there are also many criticisms."

"Don't care about those people's comments. Mediocre people will only look at problems from their perspective. Compared with changing the world more efficiently, tenderness should not be our fetters. It's just, William, why are you investing? What about Goldman Sachs and Citigroup? Yes, they are very famous, but they are all outdated, and the bullshit that banks and arms dealers control America is outdated, technology is the most important thing.”

Brother, maybe you are short of money again, Chen William looked at the eloquent Musk and guessed in his heart.

Sure enough, I heard Musk continue to talk about the current economic situation, and then the development of Tesla's first electric car has entered a critical period, but the trouble is that due to the current subprime mortgage crisis, the stock market is in a downturn The plan to go public in the first half of this year is going to be shelved. In this case, Tesla may not be able to last long with the current consumption of funds.

Well, Tesla is burning too much money. I just invested 2 million U.S. dollars in them three months ago, and now I say it won’t last long?William Chen doubts that Musk is actually just saving some reserve funds.

"Is the situation so tense? I have money here, but if I continue to invest, then I hold too many shares. You know, Tesla is not my main direction."

Hearing what William Chen said, Musk's worries eased a lot, and he said with a smile:

"You can invest in the form of preferred shares. When this electric car goes public, or we find a suitable opportunity for an IPO, you can return your preferred stock funds, or you can convert part of the preferred shares into common shares."

It seems that this guy has already figured it out, but William Chen doesn't care so much, and he really doesn't need to increase his holdings in Tesla. The current 35% ratio is already considered a suitable share, even if it increases, It is also not appropriate to hold more than 40% of the shares, otherwise Musk will sooner or later consider himself a threat, and Tesla is indeed not the main direction of William Chen, at most it will help him promote Siri.

Now that he has determined the main development direction, for companies outside this direction, he will focus on investment and will not focus on customers, which will easily affect the overall layout.

So in the end, he also agreed to Musk's proposal, and would buy $1.5 million in Tesla's preferred shares. The dividend is not set high, and the annual interest rate is only 5%, which is considered to be very supportive of Tesla. Sk is also very satisfied.

"How about I hold a party at night? I've been really busy recently and I want to relax." Musk said enthusiastically.

"Next time, we still have an appointment today."

This is also true. After William Chen came to Silicon Valley this time, he also received an invitation from Bill Gates. He will attend a charity reception organized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation tonight.

The reason for this is that after Chen William announced that he would donate 200 billion US dollars to establish the Caitlin Foundation, bigwigs including Bill Gates and Buffett publicly praised Chen William's behavior.

After announcing his retirement the year before last, Bill Gates focused his energy on the foundation's philanthropic endeavors.

William Chen knew that Bill Gates' foundation had a "Donation Pledge" initiative, which was aimed at the super rich around the world.

The Giving Pledge is a public commitment to donate more than half of your assets to charitable causes during your lifetime or after your death.After this initiative was issued, it has been responded by many rich people. Currently, more than 50 rich people have agreed to sign this pledge, and the influence is still great.

William Chen estimated that when Bill Gates invited him this time, he probably hoped that he would join the "Donation Pledge". In addition, he probably also hoped that he would donate to his charitable foundation.

(End of this chapter)