Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk is faced with a $15 billion tax bill in the coming months and this is probably the real reason he is selling some Tesla stocks.
Musk had taken to his Twitter account over the weekend to ask his 62.5 million followers if he should sell 10% of his Tesla shares. The billionaire gave people the option to vote “Yes” or “No” and pledged to abide by the results of the poll, whichever way it went.
Some 3,519,252 people responded, and 58% of them voted ‘Yes’ while 42% voted ‘No’.
The company had disclosed recently that Musk has taken out loans using his shares as collateral and may want to repay some of those loan obligations with the shares sale.
Musk has not confirmed the size of the tax bill but he disclosed on his Twitter page that he does not take salary or cash bonus thus the only way to pay his taxes personally is to sell part of his stocks which is his only means of wealth.
Meanwhile, a 5% drop in Tesla’s share price was recorded during trading earlier today.
Tesla’s shares slipped 5.3% to $1,157.30 on the trading floor, down from $1,222.09 which the market closed at on Friday.
Although, this fall in Tesla’s share price occured after the weekend voting on Musk’s Twitter account, it could not be established wether there is a direct connection between the two incidents as at press time.
