Twitter poll says Elon Musk should sell 10% of Tesla stock

Elon Musk owned about 17 percent of Tesla's outstanding shares as of June 3.

More than half of the people who voted in Tesla chief Elon Musk’s recent Twitter poll said he should sell 10 per cent of his stock in the electric vehicle (EV) company.

“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” he asked his 62 million-plus followers on Saturday. “Do you support this?”

While 57.9  per cent of people voted for “yes”, the remaining participants in the poll picked “no”.

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? — Lorde Edge (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

“I was prepared to accept either outcome,” Musk said when a Twitter user asked if the poll went the way he wanted.

Some Congressional Democrats have been pushing for billionaires like Musk, 50, to pay taxes when the price of the stocks they hold goes up, even if they don't sell any shares. It's a concept called “unrealized gains,” and Musk is sitting on a lot of them with a net worth of roughly $300 billion.

Much of Musk's wealth is held in shares of Tesla, which does not pay him a cash salary. “I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock,” he tweeted.

Elon Musk owned about 17 percent of Tesla's outstanding shares as of June 30, currently worth $208.37 billion, according to Bloomberg. The entrepreneur was also awarded a large package of stock options and convertible shares as compensation.

Tesla's third-quarter profits more than quadrupled on sharply higher sales despite a global semiconductor shortage that has plagued the auto industry, according to results released on Wednesday.

The company posted a record profit of $1.6 billion for the three-month period, as revenues surged 57 percent to $13.8 billion compared to the year-ago period.