“I sold enough stock to get to around 10 percent plus the option exercise stuff and I tried to be extremely literal here,” he said in the interview with satirical website Babylon Bee.
When asked whether he sold the stock because of the Twitter poll, he said he needed to exercise stock options that are expiring next year “no matter what.” He also added that he sold an additional “incremental stock” to get near 10 percent.
Out of the 13.5 million shares sold, 8.06 million were sold to pay taxes related to his options exercise.
Musk said on Sunday on Twitter that he would pay more than $11 billion in taxes this year.
“California used to be the land of opportunity and now it is… becoming more so the land of sort of overregulation, overlitigation, overtaxation,” he said, adding that it is “increasingly difficult to get things done” in California.
