Elon Musk says he will ‘pay over $11 billion in taxes this year'

Elon Musk, the world's richest man said on Twitter that he will pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year.

Tesla Inc. CEO announced in a tweet on Monday, without providing any other specifics, it is probably the biggest tax bill in US history.

“For those wondering, I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year,” the Tesla CEO tweeted. 

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According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Musk is the world's richest individual, with a net worth of $243 billion as of Sunday. The majority of his fortune is invested in Tesla and his rocket firm, SpaceX 

Musk’s poll

Elon Musk is rewarded in stock awards and does not receive a cash salary from Tesla. CEO Musk polled his 62.5 million Twitter followers in early November, asking, "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?"

Read more: Musk says he is “thinking of” quitting his jobs and becoming an influencer

More than 3 million people participated in the survey, with 57.9 percent voting "Yes." Musk stated that he would follow the poll's conclusions regardless of the outcome.

According to a regulatory filing, he has until August 2022 to convert around 22.9 million vested stock options into shares or let them expire worthless. He would require around $143 million to activate those options, and he might owe more than $9 billion in federal income and Medicare taxes if he did so, WSJ stated. 

Read more: Tesla falls below $1 trillion in market value after share sale and Musk's tweets

Musk’s risk of bankruptcy

Elon Musk highlighted his dissatisfaction with SpaceX's lack of progress in creating the Raptor engines that power the SpaceX rockets in a company-wide email.

CNBC broke the news first, quoting Musk, “The Raptor production crisis is much worse than it seemed a few weeks ago. We face the genuine risk of bankruptcy if we cannot achieve a Starship flight rate of at least once every two weeks next year.”

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SpaceX is working on Starship, a mass-production rocket capable of delivering people and goods anywhere in the Solar System, and is constructing a factory capable of making 100 such rockets each year.