Elon Musk not planning to sell any more shares as Tesla founder hits out at California’s high tax regime
Tesla’s boss and serial entrepreneur Elon Musk is not planning to sell any more of his Tesla shares, following yesterday’s offloading of 583,611 stock.
“I sold enough stock to get to around 10 per cent plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here,” he said in an interview with satirical website Babylon Bee.
Musk’s decision to offload a tenth of his holdings spurred in early November, after he asked his then 63.5 million Twitter followers to vote in a poll, Morning Wire reported. Almost two third of respondent, 57.9 per cent, voted in favour, while 42.1 per cent were against the move.
Since the poll’s results were released, Musk has sold 13.5 million shares for around $14bn – almost 80 per cent of his initial target.
When asked by Babylon Bee whether his decision was taken solely on the basis of the popular vote, Musk said he had to exercise stock options before they expired next year. Around 8.06 of the 13.5 million shares sold were offloaded to pay taxes related to his options exercise, Reuters reported.
Tesla’s founder also lambasted the California tax regime saying “California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is… becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation.” Tesla moved its headquarters from the Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas, earlier this month.
Musk’s comment come a few days after he tweeted he will pay $11bn in taxes this year – an amount that could constitute the biggest contribution in history, Morning Wire reported. “For those wondering, I will pay over $11bn in taxes this year,” he tweeted on Monday.