Saverin was one of the early Facebook investors and as the IPO arrived he had stock worth some $3 billion. Then came the announcement that back the previous fall he had renounced his US citizenship and gone off to live in Singapore. Cue cries of tax dodging, how ungrateful when we took him in those years before etc.
A couple of things got missed in the furore. The first was that he had to pay tax on his Facebook stock as if he sold it on the day of his citizenship renunciation. The value then was some $2.4 billion, leading to a $365 million tax bill. That tax bill is fixed of course: now that he’s no longer a citizen he doesn’t get any tax breaks or credits on losses he might make. Which of course he has done. Since he crystallised that tax bill his stock (assuming he’s still holding it and he would have been until just now because of the lock in around the IPO) has halved in value to about $1.2 billion. But he still owes that $365 million.
How’s that tax-dodging working out for you, dude?
#WritingFromIsolationWard
