Elon Musk asks Twitter to vote on whether he should sell $21bn of Tesla shares

Simon Bland

At the time of writing, you can still vote on the outcome

Space tech billionaire and recent world’s richest person, Elon Musk, has launched a Twitter poll asking his followers if he should sell $21bn (£16bn) of Tesla shares – which accounts for roughly 10 per cent.

Launched earlier this weekend and ending later tonight (November 7), Musk has put this big question to his 62.6 million followers in response to a ‘billionaires tax’ that has been proposed by US Democrats which could see him face a huge tax bill.

Responding to his own poll, Musk clarified that: “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.”

He also confirmed that he would abide by the results of the poll – whatever the outcome may be.

At the time of writing, approximately 57.4 per cent of his followers agree that he should sell 10 per cent of his Tesla stock against 42.6 per cent of followers who appose it.

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

As Tesla’s Chief Executive, Musk currently owns around $200bn worth of shares – with that number due to increase next year when the company enters into further agreements regarding the production of their electric vehicles.

However with extreme wealth comes an extremely high tax bill – and Democrats are trying to tax the wealthy for ‘Unrealised Gains’ which could see them have to pay additional tax as a result of their share prices rising – even if they don’t sell any of their stock.

This isn’t the first time Musk has taken to social media to provide answers to big questions.

Earlier this month, he got into a Twitter back-and-forth with the chief executive of the UN’s World Food Programme, David Beasley, suggesting that he would donate $6bn of Tesla stock to help end world hunger if he could provide him with a detailed roadmap on how the money would be spent.

Following up this weekend’s poll, the mono-toned tech entrepreneur tweeted the phrase “roll them” accompanied by dice emojis and a link to The Crystal Method track ‘HighRoller’.