Elon Musk tweets to ask if he should sell some Tesla stock

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is asking on Twitter whether he should sell 10 per cent of his stock in the electric-vehicle company amid pressure in Washington to increase taxes on billionaires like him.

Some Democrats have been pushing for billionaires to pay taxes when the price of the stocks they hold goes up, even if they don’t sell any shares. It’s a concept called “unrealized gains,” and Musk is sitting on a lot of them with a net worth of roughly USD 300 billion.

“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10 per cent of my Tesla stock,” he tweeted Saturday afternoon. “Do you support this?”