In the midst of a discussion about the taxation of the super-rich, Elon Musk spoke up again and specified his own tax burden: "I will pay more than 11 billion dollars in taxes this year," said the CEO of the electric car manufacturer Tesla on Twitter.
Musk had tweeted last week that he would pay more taxes this year "than any American in history."
Roland Lindner
Business correspondent in New York.
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Indeed, there should be no doubt that his tax burden will be high.
This has to do with the fact that he recently redeemed several million stock options and thus realized a taxable increase in value.
He was granted these options back in 2012.
They have an exercise price of just $ 6.24, but Tesla stock costs more than $ 930 today.
Musk was pressed for time to do these deals now or the options would soon expire.
A series of stock sales that Musk has carried out over the past few weeks and with which he has now earned around $ 14 billion is also related to the tax due.
A large part of these transactions were justified in the official notices to the Securities and Exchange Commission with expected tax payments.
Before Musk started selling Tesla shares on a massive scale, he caused a stir with a poll on Twitter asking his followers to vote on whether to sell 10 percent of his Tesla shares.
He put this survey in the context of the tax avoidance debate among the super-rich and not with his maturing stock options, which would trigger a tax payment anyway.
Musk is currently the richest person in the world, and the Bloomberg Billionaires Index puts his fortune at $ 243 billion.