Musk how to donate $5.7 billion to the United Nations? In fact, he never suffers a loss in doing things...

Source: International Finance News

The "extravagant donation" of Musk, the CEO of Tesla of some "social cattle", may be the same as last year's "angry throwing" of Tesla stocks, which not only attracted attention, but also did not suffer losses.

On February 15, local time, the US media quoted the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) documents to report that Tesla head Musk donated about $5.7 billion worth of Tesla shares in November 2021, but did not say who the recipient was.

The United Nations World Food Programme is speculated to be the most likely. But there are also indications that the recipient may be the Musk Foundation. However, on February 16, the media quoted David Beasley, the executive director of the WFP, as saying that they had not received any donations.

As of the close of the day, Tesla shares rose 5.33% to close at $922.43 per share, and although there had been a downturn before, the market value was still close to trillion US dollars.

WFP: Not me, don't mess around

Recently, Tesla submitted an F5 document to the SEC, showing that between November 19 and 29, 2021, Musk donated about 5.04 million shares to a charity, which is worth about $5.7 billion (about 36.2 billion yuan) based on the average stock price at that time.

Since Tesla disbanded its PR team in 2020, there is no way to know who the recipients are, but most people speculate that the institution that accepts the donation is likely to be WFP.

According to SEC documents, Musk's stock donation comes at a time when the WFP is calling on Musk to donate money to help solve global hunger.

Last October, the agency called on billionaires, even naming Musk, to donate huge assets to help solve global hunger. David Beasley, executive director of the WFP, said the agency was in a state of shortage of funds and fuel to transport food, "for about $6 billion to save the lives of 42 million people worldwide," which is only equivalent to 2 percent of Musk's assets.

Musk then tweeted that if the agency could describe how to use $6 billion to solve the problem of world hunger, he would sell Tesla stock for donation.

To this end, some American media have called the donation a "forced donation.".

Perhaps because of the increasing pressure from public opinion, WFP, which has been silent, finally spoke. David Beasley said they did not receive any donations.

Meanwhile, a federal document shows that the $5.7 billion worth of stock may also have been donated to the Musk Foundation.

Bloomberg says many billionaires tend to transfer shares to their own foundations, which they then donate to charity.

Technology stream sells stocks

Fast forward to last November, when Musk sold millions of shares of Tesla stock "as promised" shortly after being "head-on" with the WFP.

The results confirmed that Musk's sale of stocks this time "just happened" to solve the huge tax to deal with. In total, he sold more than $16 billion worth of Tesla stock by the end of 2021 and paid more than $11 billion in taxes to the U.S. government.

At the same time, Musk also exercised stock options at a much lower price, and a "high sell low suck" drama began.

According to public filings from the SEC on November 10 last year, Musk exercised his options at an ultra-low price of $6.24 per share, acquiring 2.15 million shares of Tesla stock, and then Musk sold about 930,000 of them at a series of prices from 11.3505 to 1196.236, representing 43.4% of the total reduction, worth about $1.1 billion.

Until mid-November, Musk had sold a total of 934091 shares, worth $973.4 million, to pay option tax exercise taxes. The vigorous reduction plan has been half completed. In addition, Musk exercised 2.11 million stock options, which expire on August 13, 2022.

On December 28 last year, he bought another 1.554 million shares of Tesla stock at an exercise price of $6.24, and then sold 934,090 shares at a price of $1,079-1,117, realizing $1.019 billion.

In the process, Tesla's stock also fell from a high of around $1,200 in early November to a low of $899 in late December.

Interestingly, Musk now holds about 2 million more shares than he owned when he started selling shares last November — 172.6 million shares in total.

Or $2.8 billion tax exemption

The rich usually wade into philanthropy. In terms of scale, Musk has become one of the world's largest individual donors last year.

In fact, Musk began planning philanthropy before his career took off, and in 2002 he established the Musk Foundation. According to the foundation's website, it is dedicated to providing grants to groups for causes such as clean energy research projects and human space exploration.

Musk also signed an oath in 2012, pledging to donate most of his wealth to charity. From time to time, he reveals his philanthropic actions on social media, such as donating $20 million to schools in Texas and $10 million to a city in Texas to revitalize the city. The state is also currently Tesla's home base.

However, the rich are keen on charitable donations, not entirely out of love, because some of the donated charities are often the donors themselves in operation, money from the left pocket into the right pocket, not only can win a good reputation, but also save a lot of taxes, why not.

Taking Musk's donation of Tesla stock as an example, because the shares donated to charity are not subject to capital gains tax, Musk can save $5.7 billion in 40% to 50% of taxes, or exempt up to $2.8 billion in taxes.