Tesla shares fall 7.5% after Twitter users vote for Elon Musk to sell stock

Tesla’s shares slipped by 7.5% on Monday. 

The shares fell after Elon Musk, currently the richest person, asked his 62.5 million Twitter followers to determine the future of his holdings in the company.   

Tesla shares were down 6.2% at $1,146.43. Shares listed in Frankfurt were down about 7% at EUR 989.10 (roughly Rs. 84,700).

“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?” Musk had said in a Twitter poll launched Saturday. 

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This came after several Democrats pushed for billionaires to pay taxes when the price of the stocks they hold goes up, even if they don’t sell any shares. It’s a concept called “unrealized gains,” and Musk is sitting on a lot of them with a net worth of roughly $300 billion.

Musk gave people the option to vote ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ and pledged to abide by the results of the poll. A majority voted ‘Yes’.

Much of Musk’s wealth is held in shares of Tesla, which does not pay him a cash salary. “I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock,” he tweeted.

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Tesla is the world’s most valuable car company and Musk, including stock options, owns a 23% stake. The billionaires shareholding in Tesla came to about 170.5 million shares, as of June 30 and 10% will amount to close to $21 billion (roughly Rs. 1,55,480 crores). The figures are based on Friday’s close, as per Reuters. 

In the three months to November 4, company insiders at Tesla sold $259.62 million (roughly Rs. 1,922 crore) worth of shares, according to Refinitiv Eikon data.