Tesla CEO Elon Musk Says He Will Pay Over $11 Billion in Taxes This Year

Electric-car maker Tesla Inc's Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Sunday on Twitter that he will pay more than $11 billion (roughly Rs. 83,690 crore) in taxes this year.

Earlier this week, Democratic US Senator Elizabeth Warren took to Twitter to say that Musk should pay taxes and stop "freeloading off everyone else" after Time magazine named him its "person of the year".

Musk responded by saying that he "will pay more taxes than any American in history this year".

Elon Musk is the world's richest person and his company Tesla is worth about $1 trillion (roughly Rs. 76,02,160 crore). Over the last few weeks, Musk has sold nearly $14 billion (roughly Rs. 1,06,342 crore) worth of Tesla shares.

Last week, Tesla was hit by a lawsuit over Musk's social media posts including his Twitter poll on stock sales that pulled down its stock prices. Tesla investor David Wagner called for access to internal documents to investigate whether Tesla and Musk violated an agreement with the US securities regulator and its board members failed to adhere to their fiduciary duties.

In 2018, Musk settled a lawsuit by the Securities and Exchange Commission over his tweet on taking the company private, agreeing to have the company's lawyers pre-approve tweets with material information about the company.

Tesla shares, which had hovered near record-highs, lost their value by about a quarter after Musk said on November 6 he would sell 10 percent of his stake if Twitter users agreed. He has since sold nearly $14 billion (roughly Rs. 1,06,800 crore) worth of shares so far.

© Thomson Reuters 2021