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Musk should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, Twitter users say

The world's richest person tweeted on Saturday that he would offload 10% of his stock if users approved the proposal in a poll. The poll garnered more than 3.5 million votes, resulting in 57.9% of the voters being in favour of the question.

Reuters ECONOMY
Published November 07,2021
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Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk should sell about 10% of his Tesla stock, according to 57.9% of people who voted on his Twitter poll asking users of the social media network whether he should offload the stake.

The world's richest person tweeted on Saturday that he would offload 10% of his stock if users approved the proposal in a poll.

The poll garnered more than 3.5 million votes.

"Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock," Musk said in a post on Saturday, adding that he does not take cash salary or bonus "from anywhere", and only has stock.

U.S. Senate Democrats have unveiled a proposal to tax billionaires' stocks and other tradeable assets to help finance President Joe Biden's social spending agenda and fill a loophole that has allowed them to defer capital gains taxes indefinitely.

Musk has criticized the proposal saying, "Eventually, they run out of other people's money and then they come for you."

As of June 30, Musk's shareholding in Tesla came to about 170.5 million shares and selling 10% would amount to close to $21 billion based on Friday's closing, according to Reuters calculations.

The world's richest person had said that he would abide by the results of the poll.