Elon Musk said on Saturday he would sell 10% of his stockholding in Tesla Inc if the move won a Twitter poll, reimagining himself in a debate about how some of the wealthiest Americans are taxed should go.
“There has been a lot of unrealized gains made lately as a means of tax avoidance, so I propose to sell 10% of my Tesla stock,” Tesla’s chief executive said on Twitter. I will follow the results, whatever it is, it goes.”
Musk, considered the world’s richest man after the rise in the value of his Tesla stock, had previously blasted a proposed tax on billionaires, subjecting some of the holdings of some 700 Americans to annual capital gains taxes on the increase in value. Happen.
“After all, they end up with other people’s money and then they come for you,” Musk wrote on Twitter last month.
The plan would have taxed billionaires’ unrealized gains on publicly traded properties, so they would have to pay taxes annually on rising values whether the assets were sold or not. (The losses would have offset gains.) This change would have effectively ended billionaires’ ability to defer capital-gains taxes indefinitely.
The proposed tax drew strong opposition and was dropped soon after it was proposed in late October. Opponents feared that the tax could be increased to apply to the wealth of less-wealthy taxpayers, among other things.
Mr Musk’s poll elicited a response on Saturday from Ron Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “Whether or not the world’s richest person pays any taxes should not depend on the results of the Twitter poll,” the Oregon Democrat said in a statement.
Regardless, Mr. Musk is keen to sell the stock, now might be a good time to do it. The current top tax rate on long-term capital gains is 23.8%, but Congress is considering increasing it. Changes in capital gains tax rates often take effect immediately to prevent gamesmanship.
According to the most recent available data in FactSet, Mr. Musk owns more than 17% of Tesla stock, which is valued at more than $200 billion. Mr Musk, who also runs the privately held rocket company Space Exploration Technologies Corp, or SpaceX, has a net worth of about $338 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Tesla’s share sale could be worth about $21 billion based on the stock’s Friday closing price of $1,222.09. The Twitter poll is set to close on Sunday afternoon.
Mr. Musk does not accept any salary at Tesla. “The only way for me personally to pay taxes is to sell the stock,” he said in a tweet on Saturday. The shares have risen nearly 75% in the past three months.
His compensation package entitles him to a stock award. He generally does not sell stock, although he has sold some to cover taxes on past stock options.
Selling shares would weaken Mr. Musk’s control of Tesla. Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook Inc.) and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Unlike Tesla, Tesla lacks the dual class of stock ownership, which gives founders supervisory power over common shareholders.
According to a company regulatory filing, Mr. Musk has certain personal debt obligations against his Tesla stock.
Mr Musk said in September that he would “prefer to stay out of politics”, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said the billionaire supported his social policies.
Mr Musk, who has since said he will move Tesla’s corporate headquarters from California to Texas, has become increasingly critical of the Biden administration after a White House event aimed at accelerating Tesla’s adoption of electric vehicles. was not invited to.
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