Twitter decides in a recent poll that Elon Musk should sell 10% of his Tesla stock

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You know what I love to write about, from my modest house (which I’m thankful for) and its slowly growing mound of bills? Billionaires that treat money like a game. Over the weekend, Elon Musk went to Twitter to ask users if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock to pay taxes this year.

You know, the thing many of us pay every year and, for some of us, is a truly stressful time of year. For Musk, the world’s richest person, it amounted to a Twitter poll where 57% of users agreed that he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock to pay taxes.

This came about after increased talks of a “billionaires’ tax” that looks at stocks when taxing certain individuals – billionaires and people that made over $100 million three years in a row. According to AP, that means 700 people total would be taxed under this initiative.

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?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 6, 2021

So, why does this matter and why do we care? Because, to put it very simply, people aren’t taxed on stocks until they sell them. For regular people, this isn’t really a huge deal, but for rich people, stocks serve another purpose – they can borrow against the value of their stocks.

These individuals also take out huge loans, because loans aren’t considered taxable income, because they have to be paid back. Then the interest from those loans can be deducted during tax season.

The billionaires’ tax would help with this method of getting around paying taxes while billionaires’ wealth continues to grow at astounding rates.

For Musk, who states in a follow-up tweet that he does not “take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere,” this means that almost all of his net worth comes from stocks, and selling stock would be his only way to pay taxes personally.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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