Elon Musk’s sale of $906 million TeslaStock Monday puts him closer to his ultimate goal of achieving sales It is important to ask: What goal do you want?

Based on the November Twitter poll MuskHe plans to sell 10% his Tesla share total. He owned just more than 170 million shares at the time. Therefore, theoretically, he hopes to sell approximately 17 million shares in order to meet his obligations. Twitter pledge.

InsiderScore/Verity reports that he sold 11.9million shares on Tuesday morning. For a staggering $12.7 billion, the sales were spread across 680 transactions. Based on his 10% target, he would likely sell another 5 million shares — which at Monday’s closing price of around $966 would be more than $4.8 billion.

But it may end up costing more. Musk is making two kinds of stock sales — one to pay taxes on his compensation package and the other for straight cash-outs, or “to-pocket” sales.

Musk sold the shares primarily to avoid taxes when he exercises his options, which expire next summer. The Tesla CEO received options to purchase 22.8 million shares, which expire in August 2012 as part of his compensation package. Musk sold shares at a price of $28 billion, making them worth more than $28 trillion. his tax bill would have been as high as $15 billion.

His tax bill has also fallen more than 20% since then. InsiderScore/Verity says Musk has already sold about 6.5million shares to finance the 15 million option taxes. To exercise all his options — which is likely, since letting them expire leaves billions on the table — Musk will likely exercise another 7.8 million options and sell a corresponding $4 billion or more to pay the taxes.

Tax-wise, there are likely to be four or five additional block sales of approximately 934,000 shares. That is the total amount of each tax-related sale before he finishes for the year.

He is not sure how many more shares he could sell for cash or other “to-pocket” proceeds. He’s sold approximately 5.4million shares so far for cash. This is not tied to any options exercises, taxes, or other tax considerations. Only $4 billion is left if all his tax-related sales cease. Yet if he continues to also sell for cash — to help fund Space-X or other ventures — the number could go higher.

Musk’s 10% target means that he will probably only be able to sell $5 billion more before the end of this year. Musk could make even greater sales if there are other cash goals or financial needs.