If you're feeling bad about people burning Teslas, Tesla made $10.8 billion in three years and paid $48 million in taxes, a rate of 0.4%. Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man, paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2018. Between 2014 and 2018, Musk’s “true” federal income tax rate was a mere 3.3 percent – lower than the average middle-income family’s tax rate each year.