Elon Musk has taunted a United States Senator, Bernie Sanders on Twitter.
Gatekeepers News reports that Musk trolled Sanders after he repeated his call for billionaires to pay more in taxes.
“I keep forgetting you’re still alive,” Musk tweeted early on Sunday, in a direct response to Sanders.
“Want me to sell more stock, Bernie? Just say the words…” Musk tweeted an hour later.
Musk undoubtedly falls under Sander’s description of “the extremely wealthy”, as he is the world’s richest person with a net worth of $285 billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
Musk ended the week selling a grand total of $6.9 billion worth of Tesla shares, which amounted to less than 4 percent of the shares he holds directly, and less than 3 percent including all the options he owns to buy additional shares.
The billionaire, had last week, ran a Twitter poll, asking if he should sell 10 percent of his holdings in the electric vehicle maker.
“Much is made lately of unrealized gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?” he had tweeted.
The Twitter poll garnered over 3.5 million votes and about 57.9 percent voted in favour of Musk selling a 10 percent chunk of his holdings.
It is however not clear if the results of the Twitter poll were the main motivation for last week’s stock sale.
The billionaire is faced with a looming tax bill that will be triggered by his need to exercise 22.9 million options to purchase shares before next August. That bill is expected to be close to $10 billion at current market prices.
Musk could also owe state income tax to California, which has a top tax rate of 13.3 percent. Even though he has moved to Texas, which has no state income tax, he conceded in a recent tweet that he’ll still owe California state income taxes because he still spends a lot of time working in the state.
Taxing extreme wealth is a big part of Sander’s platform. As the chair of the Senate’s budget committee, Sanders has proposed an annual tax on the top 0.1 percent of US households, which he claims will raise about $4.35 trillion over the next decade and cut the wealth of billionaires in half over 15 years. He also wants to implement key enforcement policies on the proposed wealth taxes.
Efforts have been made by Democrats to impose a billionaires tax to fund President Joe Biden’s sweeping social safety net plan.
“Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon tweeted in response to Musk’s Twitter poll. “It’s time for the Billionaires Income Tax.”
