Musk should sell 10 percent of his Tesla stock, Twitter users say

Tesla CEO Elon Musk should sell about 10 percent of his Tesla stock, according to 57.9 percent of people who voted on his Twitter poll asking users of the social media network whether he should offload the stake.

The world’s richest person tweeted on Saturday that he would offload 10 percent of his stock if users approved the proposal in a poll.

The poll garnered more than 3.5 million votes.

“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” Musk said in a post on Saturday, adding that he does not take cash salary or bonus “from anywhere”, and only has stock.

I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

US Senate Democrats have unveiled a proposal to tax billionaires’ stocks and other tradeable assets to help finance President Joe Biden’s social spending agenda and fill a loophole that has allowed them to defer capital gains taxes indefinitely.

Musk has criticised the proposal saying, “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.” Much of his wealth is held in shares of Tesla, which does not pay him a cash salary.

“I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock,” he tweeted.

As of June 30, Musk’s shareholding in Tesla came to about 170.5 million shares and selling 10 percent would amount to close to $21bn based on Friday’s closing, according to Reuters calculations.

The world’s richest person had said that he would abide by the results of the poll.