Musk asked his 62 million followers on Twitter on Saturday whether he should sell 10 percent of his shares in Tesla. He created the poll after the Democrats in the United States came up with a proposal to tax the shares of billionaires more heavily, among other things. The Tesla boss had previously criticized the plan.
“There’s been a lot of talk lately about unrealized gains as a form of tax evasion, so I’m proposing to sell 10 percent of my Tesla stock,” Musk tweeted.
The 10 percent sale would bring him about $21 billion (18.2 billion euros). He also said when creating the poll that he does not receive wages or bonuses, but has shares and only pays taxes on the sale of those shares.
Musk asked his followers to vote “yes” or “no” on the poll. About 57.9 percent of the more than 3.5 million voters answered yes. Not all of his followers cast a vote. That is a total of 62.7 million.
Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.
Do you support this?
— Lorde Edge (@elonmusk) 6 november 2021
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A joke?
It’s not clear at this point whether the multibillionaire will actually sell 10 percent of his Tesla shares, or whether it’s just one of his whims. Musk, however, promised his followers that he would abide by their judgment. “I will respect the results of this poll, whatever the conclusion is,” he tweeted.
As of June 30, Elon Musk owned about 17 percent of Tesla’s stock, according to Bloomberg financial news agency. Taking into account his interests in his other companies Neuralink and especially SpaceX, Elon Musk is theoretically considered the richest man in the world with a fortune estimated by Bloomberg at 338 billion dollars (292 billion euros).
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