Musk leaves it to Twitterati to decide on stock sale

Hyderabad: The world's richest person and the CEO of Tesla Inc, Elon Musk on Saturday took to Twitter to get an opinion of his 62.5 million followers on Twitter through a poll if he should sell 10 per cent of his Tesla stock, referring to a 'billionaires' tax' proposed by Democrats in the US senate.

Musk had previously said he could face a 'massive' tax bill this year as he has to exercise a large number of stock options next year. "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," Musk said on Twitter.

Musk has criticised the 'billionaires' tax proposal, which would affect 700 billionaires, and would impose taxes for long-term capital gains on tradable assets, whether or not they have been sold.

He added that he will abide by the results of the twitter poll, whichever way it goes.

The twitter poll received nearly 2 million responses in seven hours after he posted it, with 55 per cent of respondents approving the proposal to sell shares. The poll was scheduled to end around 1.30 pm on Sunday.

Musk's has about 170.5 million shares as of June 30 and selling 10 per cent of his stock would be close to $21 billion based on Friday's closing.

Musk has an option to buy 22.86 million shares at $6.24 each, which expires on August 13 next year, according to a company filing. The company's closing price was $1,222.09 on Friday. In September, Musk said he is likely to pay taxes of over half the gains he would make from exercising options. He also dismissed the possibility that he would take loans with his Tesla shares as collateral.

"Stocks don't always go up. They go down," he said at the code conference.Some Tesla board members, including his brother Kimbal Musk, offloaded large numbers of shares after Tesla stock hit a record high late October. Musk had recently said on Twitter he'd sell $6 billion in Tesla stock and donate it to the World Food Program, provided the organisation disclosed more information about how it spent its money. His tweet raised some eyebrows in the world of finance.

"We are witnessing the Twitter masses deciding the outcome of a $25B coin flip," Venture investor Chamath Palihapitiya wrote on Twitter. "Looking forward to the day when the richest person in the world paying some tax does not depend on a Twitter poll," Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman tweeted.