Elon Musk Asks His 62 Million Followers on Twitter Whether He Should Sell 10% His Tesla Stock
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and Space X, just asked his 62.5 million followers in a Twitter poll on Saturday if he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares.
The richest man in the world says he will respect the results of the poll, regardless of the outcome. The survey is scheduled to end on Sunday, around 15.00 ET.
"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?" Elon Musk wrote on Twitter.
The "Billionaire Tax" Proposed By The Democrats
According to Reuters, the CEO of Tesla criticized the tax proposal, which would affect 700 billionaires and impose taxes on long-term capital gains on tradable assets, whether or not they were sold.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has an estimated net worth of nearly 289 billion dollars, according to Bloomberg.
Almost 3 million followers responded so far to Elon Musk's question.
"I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes", he said in another post.
"Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock," Elon Musk added.
10 % Of Tesla's Shares Is Worth 21 Billion Dollars
Elon Musk's stake in Tesla was about 170.5 million shares as of June 30, and the sale of 10% of them would bring him nearly 21 billion dollars, according to the calculations made by Reuters.
The interesting fact is that he can buy shares 200 times cheaper than on the stock market.
The CEO of Tesla has an option to buy 22.86 million shares at $ 6.24 each, which expires on August 13 next year, according to a document submitted by the company. Tesla's closing price was $1,222.09 on Friday.
$ 6 Billion In Tesla Shares To Help Solve World Hunger?
Not long ago, Elon Musk said on Twitter he is willing to sell $ 6 billion in Tesla shares and donate them to the World Food Program (WFP) if the organization can explain to everyone how could this amount of money solve world hunger.This was his answer to David Beasley, the director of the UN’s World Food Programme, who claimed that "six billion dollars to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated", specifically mentioning Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.
"If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now," said Musk, adding that the UN’s initiative must include "open source accounting, so the public sees precisely how the money is spent."
"Sunlight is a wonderful thing," Musk wrote.
It remains to be seen what will happen next in this case.
