Jeff Bezos’ Miami Move Shows How Hard It Is to Tax the RichJeff Bezos’ move to Miami shows just how hard it is to tax the rich

Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos in Miami for F1’s Miami Grand Prix last year.Clive Mason – Formula 1

It’s a tale as old as our convoluted tax code: Rich people will do anything, including move across the country, to avoid paying taxes.

Jeff Bezos announced in November that he was leaving Washington state, his home for 29 years, and moving to Florida with his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez. The pair scooped up two properties for $147 million in the exclusive Indian Creek Village, an island off Miami known as the “billionaire bunker.”

He cited a slew of reasons for the move: He wanted to be closer to his parents and Blue Origin’s Cape Canaveral operations, plus he and Sánchez love Miami. What he didn’t mention was Florida’s favorable tax code.

It looks as if it probably factored in, though.

Earlier this month, Bezos announced plans to unload 50 million Amazon shares, worth about $8.5 billion, over the next year. Last week, he sold 12 million shares worth more than $2 billion, per Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

It’s a return to form for Bezos. Each year from 1998 to 2021, Bezos sold Amazon shares to fund his personal and philanthropic activities. But he stopped in 2022, the same year Washington state imposed a 7% capital-gains tax on gains of over $250,000 for those domiciled there. Florida, in contrast, has a capital-gains tax rate of zero. In fact, it’s one of the eight states that don’t have a capital-gains tax.

For someone selling securities worth billions, like Bezos, the difference amounts to a lot of money. Thanks to his new Florida address, he could save more than $610 million in state taxes over the course of the year as he continues to sell shares, CNBC first reported. For last week’s sales alone, he avoided paying $140 million.

Bezos is far from the only ultrawealthy person to circumvent paying a very small fraction of their wealth to the government — $610 million is just 0.3% of his net worth of $197 billion — thanks to Florida’s favorable tax code.

A 2023 analysis of tax-filing data found that Florida and Texas gained the most high earners between 2020 and 2021. The billionaires Ken Griffin, Carl Icahn, Daniel Och, and Josh Harris have moved to Florida over the past five years.

Though some, like Griffin — who has spent millions of dollars fighting tax increases for the wealthy — have said lower taxes didn’t factor into their moves, reports have suggested that others, like Icahn and Och, did head to the Sunshine State for tax reasons.

While some may say that Bezos is teaching the Evergreen State a lesson, it’s still home to about a dozen billionaires, including Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and MacKenzie Scott, Bezos’ ex-wife. And for those members of the superrich set, the adage remains true: Nothing is certain but death and taxes.

Correction: February 13, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misstated the amount Bezos avoided in taxes on his recent sale of shares. It was $140 million, not $147 million. The story also misstated the value of Bezos’ real-estate portfolio in Miami. It is $147 million, not $179 million.