Elon Musk proposes selling 10% of Tesla stock in Twitter poll; asks followers to vote

Elon Musk on Saturday took to his official Twitter handle to announce a ‘poll’ to decide whether he should sell 10% of his stockholdings in Tesla Inc. in order to pay the taxes. In a sarcastic post on Saturday, Nov 6, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Musk proposed to sell his electric-powered vehicle 9EV) company's stock in response to the US President Joe Biden’s recently proposed Democratic plan to levy the taxes on the top billionaires including Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and 700 others. “Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” the Tesla chief executive said on Twitter, adding, “I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes.” 

The one time world's richest man Musk’s savage remark appeared to mock the so-called American billionaire tax proposal listed out in US President Biden’s one of the largest $2 trillion “Build Back Better” infrastructure package in the US history, approved by the Congress earlier yesterday. The domestic policy seeks to implement "billionaire tax”, an estimated 23.8% tax rate on the long-term capital gains on tradable assets for the big American tech giants. The tax would be levied on any billionaire that earns more than $100 million in annual income or owns $1 billion in assets. Addressing his 62.5 million Twitter followers on Saturday, Musk asked for the majority pubic opinion to decide the fate of a large chunk of shares for his Tesla holdings in the fourth quarter. 

Musk reacts to report claiming he 'does not pays single penny in federal income taxes'

At the Code [tech] Conference in September, SpaceX boss had delivered a scathing rebuttal on the ProPublica’s recent exposé about how America’s top billionaires including Musk, Jeff Bezos, and  Warren Buffett avoided millions in taxes. The investigative report carried by the nonprofit newsroom found that in 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes, as well as Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world also paid no federal income taxes in 2018.

Musk criticized the tax claims saying that the report contained “a bunch of very misleading stuff” adding that he does not “actually draw a salary” from his companies. “My cash compensation is basically zero,” Tesla CEO stated, although acknowledging that he holds billions of dollars worth of stock options in Tesla and SpaceX. Musk had then said that he would have to pay more than 50% in taxes when he decides to sell those stocks in the near future.