More than 3.5 million Twitter users took part in a poll held by Elon Musk this weekend to decided whether he should sell 10 percent of his Tesla stock. And the answer was fairly clear cut: almost 58 percent of voters told him to sell.
In a tweet on Saturday Musk told his Twitter followers: “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock.” Musk then asked them whether they supported the move, giving them simple yes or no options.
Tesla shares fell by more than 5 percent in response to the news, dropping from $1,222.09 on the Friday before the poll to $1,157.30 on Monday morning. But that’s a small drop relative to the 73 percent rise Tesla stock has enjoyed during 2021, which have given the company a valuation of $1.2 trillion.
Musk launched the poll a week after claiming that he would donate the proceeds of the sale of $6 billion of Tesla stock to the United Nations food agency if it could demonstrate how the money would solve world hunger.
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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) November 6, 2021
The Tesla CEO doesn’t take a salary from the car company he helped found, but according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index Musk commands a $338 billion fortune, one quarter of which is Tesla stock options. Yahoo Finance says that if he exercised all of his options now and sold the shares he would be in line for a massive $95.9 billion windfall before taxes.
A Looming Tax Bill May Be Behind It All
Musk, who is currently the world’s richest man and has previously been in hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over tweets that have moved Tesla’s stock price, had promised to abide by the result of this weekend’s Twitter poll. But according to CNBC he would have probably had to start selling millions of shares this quarter anyway due to a looming tax bill estimated at more than $15 billion.