According to financial documents released Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold 934,090 company shares valued at around $ 1.02 billion not to fund a McMansion on Mars.Musk said he is preparing to pay the biggest tax bill in history.
With an estimated value of more than $ 275 billion, Musk is the richest person in the world.
As ProPublica revealed in a report earlier this year, Musk has not yet paid large sums of money in personal taxes, given that they alone pay taxpayers’ income or share taxes as soon as they do.
After exercising options to purchase nearly 1.6 million Tesla shares at an exercise price of $ 6.24 per share (given to him in his 2012 compensation package), Musk’s stake in Tesla rose to more than 177 million shares.
Now Musk is expected to face the largest individual tax bill in US history, with state and California income taxes estimated at $ 11 billion, according to CNBC
. Tax experts say you have to pay the bill before you can get any compensation of approximately $23 billion in stock options due in August.
After Musk was named “Person of the Year” by Time Magazine, Senator Elizabeth Warren tweeted that the government should “amend the rigged tax code so that the person of the year actually pays taxes and stops taking advantage of everyone else.”