Elon Musk on Saturday sent a tweet in which he proposed selling 10% of his Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock, and asked his followers to vote on his decision.
What Happened: The Tesla CEO was referencing a proposal in the U.S. Senate to tax the richest Americans in an effort to pay for social safety net and climate change policies. The plan would tax billionaires on the unrealized gains in the value of their liquid assets, such as stocks, bonds and cash. Musk responded in a tweet.
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
Musk followed up with a second tweet about 10 minutes later, explaining why selling his Tesla stock would be his way of paying such a tax.
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
At the time of publication, 55.6% supported Musk selling his stock, while 44.4% opposed the idea.
Why It Matters: The tax would be levied on those with more than $1 billion in assets or more than $100 million in income for three consecutive years, that’s about 700 people in the United States. Included in that group are Musk, Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ: FB) founder Mark Zuckerberg, and Amazon.Com Inc (NASDAQ: AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos.
The legislation would initially impose a capital gains tax of 23.8 percent on the increase in value of billionaires’ tradable assets based on the original price of those assets.
Related Link: Why Paul Krugman Accuses Elon Musk Of An ‘Insecure Ego’
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