Elon Musk says he has reached plan to sell 10% of his Tesla shares

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he had sold ‘enough stock’ to reach his plan to sell 10% of his shares in the world’s most valuable car company, according to an interview released on Tuesday.

The billionaire, who moved the company’s headquarters from California to Texas this month after his personal move last year, also slammed California for ‘overtaxation.’

Musk said he will pay roughly $11 billion taxes this year, potentially the largest individual payment to the Internal Revenue Service, following a bitter war of words with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren over his taxes.

Tesla shares, which had hovered near record-highs, lost about a quarter of their value after Musk said on Nov. 6 he would sell 10 per cent of his stake if Twitter users agreed.

On Tuesday, Musk sold another 583,611 shares Tuesday at an average price of around $900, making them worth just over $528million, an SEC filing shows.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said he had sold ‘enough stock’ to reach his plan to sell 10% of his shares in the world’s most valuable car company

This brings the total number of shares he has offloaded to 13.5 million – about 80 per cent of what he had planned to sell.

Musk has made more than $14 billion in the sales, MarketWatch reported.

But at the same time at time, Musk has also exercised options to buy about 16.4 million stock options at near $6.24 a share – meaning he has been increasing his stake in the electric-auto maker. 

‘I sold enough stock to get to around 10 per cent plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here,’ he said in the interview with website Babylon Bee.

When asked whether he sold the stock because of the Twitter poll, he said he needed to exercise stock options that are expiring next year ‘no matter what.’

He also added that he sold an additional ‘incremental stock’ to get near 10 per cent.

Out of the 13.5 million shares sold, 8.06 million were sold to pay taxes related to his options exercise.

Musk said on Sunday on Twitter that he would pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year.

‘California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is… becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation,’ he said, adding that it is ‘increasingly difficult to get things done’ in California.

Calculations by Bloomberg News suggest Musk’s tax bill could be the largest individual payment to the Internal Revenue Service this year.

It comes amid claims that Musk ‘paid nothing’ in federal income taxes in 2018 and less than $70,000 in 2015 and 2017.

Sen Warren dubbed Musk ‘the world’s richest freeloader’ amid a row over the billionaire’s taxes.

Musk responded to her criticism by saying that he ‘will pay more taxes than any American in history this year’.

Musk and Warren’s war of words began after the news broke that Musk was named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

It comes after Warren (pictured) dubbed Musk 'the world's richest freeloader' during a war of words over the billionaire's taxes

It comes after Warren (pictured) dubbed Musk ‘the world’s richest freeloader’ during a war of words over the billionaire’s taxes

Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized Telsa CEO Elon Musk after he was named Time Magazine's 2021 Person of the Year. She called on him to pay his fair share of taxes

Sen. Elizabeth Warren criticized Telsa CEO Elon Musk after he was named Time Magazine’s 2021 Person of the Year. She called on him to pay his fair share of taxes

Warren tweeted last Monday: ‘Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.’

But Musk soon hit back, writing ‘Stop projecting’, and dubbing the politician and former law professor ‘Senator Karen’. 

‘You remind me of when I was a kid and my friend’s angry Mom would just randomly yell at everyone for no reason,’ Musk continued.

‘Please don’t call the manager on me, Senator Karen.’

He also shared a link to a Fox News opinion article claiming Warren lied about having Native American heritage to benefit from affirmative action.  

 But in an interview with MSNBC on Wednesday, Warren clapped back, calling Musk ‘the world’s richest freeloader,’ and claiming he ‘evidently has a very thin skin’. 

‘But you know the part that makes me angry about this?’ she continued.

‘It’s on behalf of every public school teacher, every waitress, every computer programmer, every street cleaner who actually paid taxes, and that means they paid more than Elon Musk did in federal income taxes.

‘And that’s just not right, and it means the system is broken.

‘But the days when these guys not only get to rake it all in, but then rub everybody else’s nose in it while they head off into outer space and declare how they did this all on their own when they were subsidized by the federal government and subsidized by every waitress and public school teacher who paid their taxes’ is over.

‘This is wrong and Elon Musk needs to eat a big dish of that,’ she concluded.