EFE.- The businessman Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, revealed on his Twitter account that he will have to pay more than 11,000 million dollars in taxes in 2021 after selling around 14,000 million dollars in shares of the car manufacturer Tesla this year.
Musk, who is estimated to be the richest man in the world at $ 244 billion, revealed in a tweet on Sunday night that he will pay “more than $ 11 billion in taxes this year.”
When Sen. Elizabeth Warren last week criticized the magazine Times For choosing Musk as “man of the year,” the businessman replied to Democratic politics with a tweet: “This year I will pay more taxes than any American in history.”
Read: Elon Musk would pay more taxes than any American this year
In early November, Musk asked his 62.5 million Twitter followers whether he should sell 10% of his shares.
“There has been a lot of talk about unrealized profits as a way to avoid paying taxes so I propose to sell 10% of my shares in Tesla. Do they support it? ”Musk asked.
The result of the survey conducted by Musk was a majority of “Yes” so the businessman proceeded to sell 14,000 million dollars in shares of the company.
Musk conducted the survey before a series of company stock options that he received in 2012 as payment for his position as CEO at Tesla expired in August 2022. Had he waited for 2022, Musk would have had to pay a higher amount in taxes.
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According to specialized media, Musk finances his lifestyle with loans he obtains using his shares in Tesla as collateral, which allows him to reduce what he pays in taxes.
This year, the journalistic organization ProPublica published a report in which it said that Musk paid 455 million dollars in taxes between 2014 and 2018 even though his assets increased in that period to 13.9 billion dollars.
In 2018, the businessman did not pay federal taxes.
In 2020, Musk already changed his official residence from Los Angeles, where he had lived for the past 20 years, to Austin, Texas. The change of residence allowed Musk to significantly reduce the taxes he pays.
In October, Musk said he would move Tesla’s headquarters from Palo Alto, California, to Austin, Texas, and justified the decision because of the high cost of living in the Californian town.
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