Elon Musk possibly selling stock due to $15 billion tax bill: Report

Elon Musk is said to be facing a hefty tax bill amounting to over $15 billion, and it was suggested that this could be one of the reasons why he is contemplating selling his Tesla stock.

According to CNBC, Elon Musk may go ahead and sell Tesla stock regardless of the outcome of votes in a poll where he asked his followers if he should sell or not. Last weekend, the richest man on Earth asked his 62.7 million followers on Twitter to vote if he should put 10% of Tesla stock up for sale or not.

“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock,” he tweeted on Nov. 7.

Musk said that he will make a decision based on the result of the poll, “whichever way it goes.” The poll attracted a total of 3,519,252 respondents, and the final results were 57.9% against 42.1% who are against the idea. If he remains true to his words, then it is likely that he will be selling Tesla shares soon.

But then again, CNBC reported that the billionaire could really be selling millions worth of Tesla shares even if more people voted against the sale. It was said that the reason for this is simple: Elon Musk is facing a massive tax bill of more than $15 billion, so he is likely to sell regardless of the results.

It was added that Musk also took out loans recently and used his shares as collateral. With the stock sale, he may use some of the money to pay back part of those loan obligations.

“If the price of our common stock were to decline substantially, Mr. Musk may be forced by one or more of the banking institutions to sell shares of Tesla common stock to satisfy his loan obligations if he could not do so through other means,” Tesla stated in its Q3 Securities and Exchange Commission 10-Q filing. “Any such sales could cause the price of our common stock to decline further.”