Elon Musk Polls Twitter, Sells 1 Billion in Tesla Stocks

Full time Internet Troll, meme connoisseur, and billionaire Elon Musk took to Twitter this week to pick the hive minds brain about whether he should sell some Tesla stock to pay his taxes.

“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?”

“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.”

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 (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

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 (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

The poll went 57.9% in favour of selling. As a result he sold 934,000 shares/$1.1 Billion USD of Tesla. These were from options set to expire in August 2022. Of course, as with any Musk tweet, he sent Tesla’s stocks into a nose dive at the thought of such a massive sell off, wiping $50 billion USD from Elon Musk’s net worth.

The transactions were reportedly from a pre-arranged trading plan adopted in mid-September. So it seems that it isn’t too hard to play a mob like a fiddle after all. According to the filing the sale was made “solely to satisfy the reporting person’s tax withholding obligations related to the exercise of stock options”.

Last time Musk sold shares it was in 2016 when he had to cover $590 million in income taxes.