Billionaire Amazon founder and chairman Jeff Bezos announced his move from the Seattle area to Florida in late 2023 in a sentimental Instagram post, featuring a video his dad took of him at Amazon’s first “office” and Bezos explaining how he wanted to be closer to his parents, who’d recently moved back to Miami. Plus, Bezos noted, operations of his rocket company Blue Origin were increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral. Not mentioned: That he would save a bundle in taxes. This year alone, he likely saved an estimated $1 billion.
Bezos, the world’s second-richest person, sold $13.6 billion worth of Amazon stock so far this year, more than the dollar amount sold by any other U.S. billionaire who’s required to disclose transactions publicly. Before this year’s sales, it had been two years since Bezos had last sold stock. His pause began in January 2022, the same month Washington state, where he lived at the time, first enacted a 7% state tax on long-term capital gains of more than $250,000, which would include Amazon stock that Bezos has held for more than one year.
It soon became more evident that Bezos was getting ready to make an official move to Florida: In the latter half of 2023, he splashed out $234 million to buy three mansions on Indian Creek, a manmade barrier island known as Florida’s billionaire bunker; registered to vote there; and filed a previously unreported declaration of domicile in the state—three critical steps to establish legal residency in Florida, which famously doesn’t impose income, capital gains or estate taxes.
Yet, progressive think tax revenue will always be there.
