Elon Musks leaves the question of whether he should sell 10% of Tesla stock to a Twitter vote.
“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?”
That was a late Saturday tweet from the electric-car maker’s TSLA,
Musk went on to say that he would “abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes,” and that he doesn’t “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.”
Of the thousands that responded to Musk’s tweet, many expressed concern that such a sale would tank the stock, hurting average investors who have benefited anew from a recent record run for shares,
Tesla shot to a new high last week of $1,229.91 a share, and surged 43% in October. The company’s market capitalization climbing past $1 trillion after Hertz Global HTZ,
Read: Tesla and Hertz are reportedly negotiating over how quickly Hertz will receive deliveries
Shares of Tesla finished up 9% last week, just off that record high at $1,222.09, and are up 73% so far this year. Musk himself holds about a 17% stake in Tesla that’s worth more than $200 billion. A 10% chunk, if he decided to sell, would be worth around $21 billion based on Friday’s close, according to FactSet.
Musk himself has said Tesla’s share price may be too high, as he repeated in a September interview with Kara Swisher for the New York Times. “But if you also ask me, do I think Tesla will be worth more than this in five years? I think the answer is, yes,” he told her.
For now, Musk may have created some built-in tension for the stock market’s new week. All three major U.S. stock benchmarks SPX,
In late October, Musk slammed a proposed new annual tax on billionaires’ unrealized capital gains, saying he agreed with the view that this type of tax eventually would hit others as well. “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you,” he said, in response to another comment on Twitter.
Musk is by far the world’s richest billionaire, with a net worth of $314 billion, according to Forbes real-time billionaire’s list. Trailing by around $100 billion is Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, who is worth $203 billion.
