Tesla CEO Musk Says He Sells “Enough Stock”; Snips at California for Overtaxation

Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk aimed to sell 10 percent of his Tesla shares, and he has sold “enough stock” through selling more than $14 billion worth for over one month, according to Reuters.

Reportedly, Musk has exercised stock options that expire next year. Following several rounds of sales, he still has more than 3 million stock options which will expire in next August. 

Tesla shares, which had hovered near record highs, lost about a fourth of their value soon after Musk said on November 6 that he would sell 10 percent of his stake if Twitter users agreed. Then on Tuesday, he sold another 934,091 shares, taking the total he has sold to 13.8 million. Whereas, Musk had expected to sell 17 million or so shares. He added that he needed to exercise stock options expiring next year “no matter what”.

Additionally, one of his purposes of selling stocks is to pay tax. 8.4 million out of the 13.8 million shares sold were to pay taxes related to his options exercise.

Musk has moved the company’s headquarters from California to Texas, where he faces no income tax, following his personal move last year. He snipped at California for “overtaxation” and “overregulation”. He said that he would pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year, and that his personal tax rate exceeded 50%.

"California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is ... becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation," he noted, adding it was "increasingly difficult to get things done" in California.