In a Twitter poll, more than two million people asked Elon Musk, a US entrepreneur who founded Tesla and one of the richest people in the world, to sell 10 percent of his shares in Tesla, a very high-value company. on the market. Musk had published the poll on Sunday, saying he would respect the result, “whatever”.
Musk had presented the survey explaining that lately there is much talk of fairer measures to tax stocks and financial capital, and that selling 10 percent of Tesla's shares – paying a relative commission on the sale – could be a way to “balance” the missed taxes that Musk hasn't had to pay for years.
3.5 million people took part in the survey: the option to ask Musk to sell his shares won with 57.9 percent of the 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?
– Lorde Edge (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021
Musk has benefited for years from the so-called unrealized gains, which in Italian are defined as “capital gains”: they are the earnings linked to the increase in the value of the shares, earnings that exist on paper but which in the United States are difficult to tax until the shares they are sold generating liquidity. The issue of gains linked to capital gains is much discussed in recent weeks in the United States, due to a proposal by the Democratic Party to create a new tax on unrealized gains for particularly wealthy people. The tax would serve to provide financial coverage for some of the more ambitious social reforms proposed by Joe Biden's administration.
Tesla shares are currently worth around $ 1,222, which is around $ 1,050. The Wall Street Journal calculated that since Musk owns roughly 17 percent of the company's stock, selling ten percent would generate roughly $ 21 billion in revenue. It is not yet clear when Musk intends to honor his commitment.
Musk is known to use Twitter in an often unpredictable way: about a year ago, for example, he tweeted that he thought the value of Tesla's shares was too high, causing them to lose about 13 billion dollars. In 2018 he had to resign as Tesla president for announcing, also on Twitter, that he would withdraw Tesla from the stock exchange, only to retract shortly after. “Some people use their hair to express themselves. I use Twitter, ”Musk explained recently.
