Tesla Motors, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSLA), Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) – Tesla CEO Elon Musk proposes to sell 10% of the company’s shares, he asks Twitter followers to decide

Elon Musk sent a tweet on Saturday proposing to sell 10% of his Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) stock, and asked supporters to vote on his decision.

What happened: The Tesla chief referred to a proposal in the US Senate to tax the richest Americans in an attempt to pay for social safety nets and climate change. The plan will tax billionaires on unrealized gains in the value of their liquid assets, such as stocks, bonds and cash. Musk responded in a tweet.

A lot has been done lately of unrealized gains as a means of tax evasion, so I propose to sell 10% of my Tesla stock.

Do you support this?

̵[ads1]1; Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

Musk followed up with a new 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 cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only own shares, so the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell shares.

– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

At the time of publication, 55.6% supported Musk selling his share, while 44.4% opposed the idea.

Why it matters: The tax will be levied on those with more than $ 1 billion in assets or more than $ 100 million in income for three consecutive years, that is, 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 in principle impose a capital gains tax of 23.8 per cent on the increase in the value of billionaires’ marketable assets based on the original price of these assets.

Related link: Why Paul Krugman accuses Elon Musk of an “insecure ego”