Centibillionaire Jeff Bezos is unloading Amazon shares as fast as Mackenzie Scott makes donations. The Amazon co-founder got rid of 24 million shares, worth more than $2 billion, in only four trading days, ending his three-year sabbatical with a billion-dollar bang. The world’s third-richest person, worth $190 billion, relocated from Seattle to Miami to save billions in taxes. This year alone, the Amazon founder’s tax savings will be enough to cover the cost of his $500 million Koru sailing yacht and its $75 million helicopter-carrying support vessel.
Despite stepping down from his CEO post at Amazon two years ago, he is still the company’s chairman and its largest individual shareholder, with 9.4% of the stock. He sold nearly 12 million shares of his 976 million, which coincides with a two-year high for Amazon’s share price. Florida has no state income tax or capital gains tax, while Washington, where he lived earlier, introduced a 7 percent capital gains tax on sales of stocks or bonds of more than $250,000 in 2022.
With no state income tax or tax on capital gains, the billionaire, worth $190 billion, saved a cool $280 million on the $2 billion sale. According to Bloomberg, the tax has received some pushback in Washington. Following in Bezos’s footsteps, even billionaire Ken Fisher said he would move his firm from Washington to Texas, criticizing the tax and the court decision that upheld it.
