Everyone wishes to be rich like Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, a man who sits on a fortune of $263 billion as the third-richest man on the planet. However, being a billionaire comes with its fair share of bills, a fact that people easily tend to overlook when dazzled by the number of zeros in a man’s net worth. Those zeros can look just as startling on a comparatively inconsequential bill. Case in point, the tech tycoon got hit with a notice for about $244,000 in overdue L.A. County taxes and fees on his luxury jet.
According to the LA Times, L.A. The county has billed hundreds of private plane owners accused of having unpaid taxes on their luxury jets. A few representatives did admit that they did not even know they were subject to the tax in L.A. That could explain how such bills went unpaid. Bezos received a final bill by June 30 which mentions the unpaid amount.
Sail trip Mallorca
It is reasonable to assume that the billionaire who splurges nearly $1,40,000 a day on his superyacht $500 million Koru, even when the yacht is not actively cruising, wouldn’t balk at paying his taxes. One possible explanation is that he, or rather, his staff, did not know of the tax’s existence, as representatives of several other owners claimed. It is possible that the taxes relate to his Gulfstream G700, registration N11AF, which he reportedly received in July 2024, although the county has not identified the aircraft. What is even more interesting is how taxation works.
California charges an annual property tax on private aircraft, generally around 1% of the plane’s assessed market value, based on where the aircraft regularly spends time on the ground. It has nothing to do with the fact that Bezos actually lives in Florida, or that his private jet was registered in the United States through a Utah-based aircraft trustee.
In essence, this is the Blue Origin founders’ parking bill; if any of his jets regularly slept in a Los Angeles hangar, the county can claim a share of its taxable value. Going by the value of his flagship Gulfstream G700 worth a whopping $80 million, being taxed at 1%, the annual bill would be about $800,000. Suddenly, the $244,000 bill doesn’t sound so astronomical and amounts for a mere 0.3% of the aircraft’s value. It is the work of L.A. County Assessor Jeff Prang who is combing through records to find the ultrawealthy jet owners who failed to pay taxes on their luxury planes. Among them, he has sent notices to Stan Kroenke, the billionaire owner of the Rams, who got dinged about $290,000, a lot more than Bezos even.
The list includes Rihanna, Judge Judy, Nike co-founder Phil Knight. The mission became easier after Prang’s office obtained $700,000 aircraft-discovery software showing there were hundreds of planes often situated in the county that weren’t paying taxes. The data, known as ADS-B Out, is considered one of the most accurate ways to determine a plane’s location. And while it didn’t come cheap, the program is expected to pay for itself many times over by generating approximately $38 million in additional property-tax revenue. The private jets are certainly not going anywhere.