The richest man on earth and CEO of electric-car maker Tesla Inc., Elon Musk, said on Sunday on his Twitter that he will pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year.
Musk's payment of more than $11 billion in taxes this year could be a record amount to be paid to the United States Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Earlier this week, Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren took to Twitter to say that Musk should pay taxes and stop "freeloading off everyone else" after Time magazine named him its "person of the year."
Musk responded by saying that he "will pay more taxes than any American in history this year."
Musk's company Tesla is worth about $1 trillion. Over the last few weeks, Musk has sold nearly $14 billion worth of Tesla shares.
Musk had sold $1.05 billion in Tesla shares on Nov. and this makes the total amount of Tesla shares sold by Musk in November worth close to $10 billion.
Musk sold 934,091 shares of the luxury electric car maker at an average price of $1,166 per share. He also bought 2.15 million shares of the company.
Earlier, in the second week of Nov., Musk had sold shares worth $6.9 billion, followed by another such exercise to sell another $1.9 billion worth of shares.
These were sold after Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.
After the entire series of transactions, Musk, along with his trust, holds 169 million shares in Tesla.
While the entire selling spree might come across as random and under the influence of the Twitter poll, it was planned from the very beginning as Musk had hinted multiple times that he would have to pay 50% in taxes if his stock options expire at Tesla.
Talking about selling his stock, Morningstar analyst Seth Goldstein wrote in a statement last week, "We do not view management's potential decision to sell stock as a reason to change our forecast for Tesla."
Tesla stock reached an all-time high in early November when the stock was valued at $1,243. But, since then, the shares lost ground and dropped to $979 on Nov. 15.
The stock has recovered slightly and is currently trading at $1,243, up by $18.40, or 1.66% higher than the previous close at $1,109.
