there is a difference between worth and income

Worth is the total value of all your assets minus debt. For Elon, that’s about $250 billion, mostly from stock.

But liquid assets are money that you can spend immediately, and Elon has very little of that. In fact, he is kind of poor when it comes to liquid assets, and only has a $45,000 house

That $11 billion in taxes was quite a lot, he probably could not pay it with his liquid assets and likely had to sell some of his stock