Musk Polls Twitter On Selling Tesla Stock To Pay Taxes

Forbes reports:

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk just launched a Twitter poll that is literally worth over $25 billion. Musk, who doesn’t take a significant salary and whose wealth is therefore protected from taxation as his companies’ valuations grow, is asking his Twitter followers if he should sell Tesla stock in order to pay tax.

This is no idle tweet: Musk says he will abide by the results of the poll … whichever way it goes. A $25 billion sale, which Musk would likely manage over time to avoid crashing the stock, would be globally significant. This poll follows significant online discussion about the ways wealthy people use to avoid tax.

Reuters reports:

Analysts say he may have to offload a significant number of shares anyway to pay taxes since a large number of options will expire next year. The comments from Musk come after the proposal in Congress to tax billionaires’ assets to help pay for Joe Biden’s social and climate-change agenda.

Tesla board members including Elon Musk’s brother Kimbal have recently sold shares in the electric carmaker. Kimbal Musk sold 88,500 shares while fellow board member Ira Ehrenpreis sold shares worth more than $200M.

CNBC reports:

At an appearance at the Code Conference in September, Musk said when his stock options expire at Tesla, his marginal tax rate will be over 50% and that he was already planning to sell soon. “I have a bunch of options that are expiring early next year, so … a huge block of options will sell in Q4 — because I have to or they’ll expire,” Musk said at the conference.

At this writing, 57% of Musk’s followers say he should sell. Musk has 62 million followers on Twitter.