Tesla CEO and the world's richest person, Elon Musk, said in a tweet on Twitter that he will pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year, possibly a record boost to the US Internal Revenue.
According to Arab Net, calculations conducted by Bloomberg News last week showed that the American billionaire may face a tax bill of more than 10 billion dollars for 2021, if he exercises all his options, which are scheduled to expire next year.
The unusually high tax comes after Musk exercised nearly 15 million stock options and sold millions of shares to cover taxes related to those transactions. This followed a Twitter poll last month in which Musk asked his followers whether he should sell 10% of his stake in the electric car maker, whose shares have risen more than 2,300% over the past five years.
A report by ProPublica in June said that Musk paid little income taxes compared to his vast fortune. But he rejected that characterization, saying he doesn't get paid by his companies, SpaceX or Tesla, and pays an effective tax rate of 53% on the stock options he exercises.
He added that he expected to increase the tax rate next year.
Musk said earlier this month that he will pay more taxes this year than any other American in history. It was in response to other criticism from Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
