Elon Musk asked Twitter users to decide whether to sell him 10% of Tesla shares

The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has launched a poll on Twitter asking if he should sell a 10% stake in Tesla, the electric car company he leads.

“There's been a lot of talk lately about unrealized gains being a tax evader, so I'm proposing to sell 10% of my Tesla shares. Do you support it?" the billionaire wrote, noting that the only way for him to pay taxes is to sell shares, since he does not receive a salary or bonuses.

Musk vowed to stick to the vote no matter how it turns out. At the moment, almost three million Twitter users have already taken part in the vote. More than 50% of the votes cast for the answer "Yes". The poll will end in a few hours.

Elon Musk owns about 170.5 million Tesla shares, Reuters estimates , and a 10 percent stake would be worth about $21 billion.

Musk's poll is linked to the Democrats' proposal for a so-called "billionaire tax" in the US. Earlier, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden proposed a plan according to which the richest people in the US would be required to pay a tax of 23.8% annually on the increase in the value of traded stocks and bonds. Musk personally opposed this initiative.

• In early November, Elon Musk became the first person in history to be worth over $300 billion. It has increased dramatically in recent months due to the rise in Tesla shares. The capitalization of the company itself at the end of October for the first time exceeded a trillion dollars.