Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and many other billionaires are unloading their stock at historic levels. Why?

Insiders like the Waltons, Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s co-founders have sold $63.5 billion through November, up 50% from 2020

Source: Internet

Company founders and leaders are unloading their stock at historic levels, with some selling shares in their businesses for the first time in years, amid soaring market valuations and ahead of possible changes in the U.S. and some state tax laws.
So far this year, 48 top executives have collected more than $200 million each from stock sales, nearly four times the average number of insiders from 2016 through 2020, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of data from the research firm InsiderScore.
Among them is of course Elon Musk, who has recently been selling billions of Tesla shares at a very fast and steady rate.
The list of executives also includes billionaire Ronald Lauder and Google co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Lauder sold 2 million shares this year. This is the first time since 2016 to sell more than 600 million U.S. dollars in pre-tax sales. Page and Brin each sold about 1.5 billion U.S. dollars before tax. The price sold nearly 600,000 shares.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (Satya Nadella) last month sold half of its shares at a pre-tax price of approximately US$374 million. Analysts believe this move may be related to Washington State’s levy on long-term capital gains next year. 7% is tax-related.

Source: Internet

In addition, the heir to Wal-Mart’s wealth, the Walton family and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, are expected to sell more shares this year than ever before.
"What you have seen is unprecedented," Daniel Taylor, an accounting professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told the Wall Street Journal. To him, this kind of sales is reminiscent of the sell-off during the Internet boom. He added that this may be a normal trend, and insider stock sales tend to ebb and flow.
The legislation, pending in the Senate, imposes a 5% tax on adjusted gross income above $10 million beginning in 2022, and another 3% on income over $25 million, including capital gains from stock sales, the WSJ reports. Wealthy taxpayers could save up to $8 million in taxes on every $100 million of shares sold ahead of the effective date.