Tesla CEO Elon Musk asked on Twitter on Saturday whether he should sell 10% of his shares in the electric vehicle company, at a time when Washington is pushing to raise taxes on billionaires like him.
Some Democrats have lobbied for billionaires to pay taxes when the price of the stock they own rises, even if they don’t sell it. It’s a concept known as “unrealized earnings,” and Musk has many of them with a net worth of roughly $ 300 billion.
“There has been a lot of talk lately that unrealized gains are a means of tax evasion, which is why I propose to sell 10% of my Tesla stock,” he tweeted on Saturday. “Do you support this?”
By 5:40 p.m., just over two hours after Musk’s initial tweet, 54% had said yes out of a total of 876,189 votes.
Much of Musk’s wealth is in Tesla stocks, which do not earn him a cash salary.
“I only have shares, so the only way to pay taxes personally is to sell shares,” he tweeted.
Musk, who is known for his sometimes superficial tweets, said he will stick “to the results of this poll.”
