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Elon Musk says he will pay $ 11 billion in taxes this year, a world record.

Elon Musk, the rich­est per­son in the world and CEO of elec­tric car firm Tes­la, has said he will pay more than $ 11 bil­lion in tax­es this year, which could rep­re­sent a record amount of annu­al tax paid by one person.

Musk, who was accused ear­li­er this year of pay­ing no fed­er­al tax­es in 2018 despite an esti­mat­ed $ 243 bil­lion , said he would foot the unusu­al­ly high tax bill this year after the sale of mil­lions of Tes­la shares.

It comes after Sen­a­tor Eliz­a­beth War­ren last week described Musk as “the rich­est pic­nic in the world.”

Musk has sold around $ 14 bil­lion in Tes­la shares since ear­ly Novem­ber, when he asked his Twit­ter fol­low­ers if he should sell 10% of his hold­ings. Almost 60% of his 67 mil­lion fol­low­ers vot­ed for him to sell the shares. Sales tax­es are esti­mat­ed to be between $ 11 bil­lion and $ 12 billion.

The con­tro­ver­sial entre­pre­neur prob­a­bly should have start­ed sell­ing his 23% stake in Tes­la regard­less of the out­come of the vote, as he faced a huge tax bill on the stock options award­ed to him in 2012 which were to expire in August 2022. To exer­cise the options, he is required to pay tax on the gain. Tes­la shares have risen more than 20,000% in the past 10 years.

Musk’s tax pay­ments have been a polit­i­cal light­ning rod in the Unit­ed States, because rather than receiv­ing a salary or bonus­es (which are taxed), the bil­lion­aire’s wealth comes from Tes­la free stock awards and the increase in the com­pa­ny’s share price (income tax is only paid on cap­i­tal gains when the shares are sold).

A ProP­ub­li­ca inves­ti­ga­tion ear­li­er this year found that Musk paid an “effec­tive tax rate” of 3.27% between 2014 and 2018, and no fed­er­al tax at all in 2018.

War­ren, a pro­gres­sive Demo­c­ra­t­ic sen­a­tor who has long cam­paigned for tax reforms to try to ensure the super-rich pay more tax­es, last week ques­tioned Time mag­a­zine’s deci­sion to name Musk as his per­son. year.

“Let’s change the rigged tax code so that Per­son of the Year will pay tax­es and stop pick­ing on every­one,” she tweeted.

Musk replied, “If you opened your eyes for 2 sec­onds, you would real­ize that I would be pay­ing more tax­es than any Amer­i­can in his­to­ry this year.”

Tes­la shares have fall­en about a quar­ter since Musk’s tweet about sell­ing his shares. They fell anoth­er 3% on Mon­day. The com­pa­ny’s mar­ket val­ue fell to just over $ 900 bil­lion, down from the $ tril­lion val­u­a­tion reached in October.

Ana­lysts at invest­ment bank Guggen­heim Part­ners warned investors on Mon­day that pro­duc­tion of elec­tric vehi­cles could be below expec­ta­tions, and said they feared the Tes­la share price could be affect­ed as more Com­peti­tors were enter­ing the elec­tric and autonomous vehi­cle (AV) mar­ket at low­er prices.

“We believe that elec­tric vehi­cle adop­tion may be below indus­try expec­ta­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Unit­ed States due to a cheap­er reg­u­la­to­ry envi­ron­ment and lim­it­ed prod­uct launch­es in key mar­ket seg­ments,” Guggen­heim ana­lyst Ali Faghri said.