Musk, the company’s founder and CEO and posted a Twitter poll Saturday afternoon which said, “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?”
Musk receives no salary from Tesla. His 170.5 million shares of Telsa were worth $208.3 billion as of the close of trading on Friday. At the price of $1,2209.09 per share, 10 percent of them would be valued at $20.8 billion. With a long-term capital gains tax rate of 20% for someone in Musk’s income bracket, it would equal a tax bill from the sale approaching $4.2 billion.
He has owned 80% of those 170.5 million Tesla shares since the company’s initial public offering in 2010.
Earlier in the week, Musk offered to sell Tesla stock ‘right now’ if the United Nations could prove $6 billion would solve world hunger.
“Six billion dollars to help 42 million people that are literally going to die if we don’t reach them. It’s not complicated,” Beasley said on CNN’s Connect the World program with Becky Anderson. The sum would equate to roughly 2% of Musk’s net wealth.