Financial experts predicted Jeff Bezos’s move to Florida would pay off handsomely—and they were right. So far, the Amazon founder’s tax savings have been astronomical, worth an estimated $1 billion this year alone.
I have so many hours in smash and totally forgot about this. I’m honestly shocked it hasn’t been clipped and posted more.
Stop glorifying terrorists. /s
What terrorist? It’s just Luigi
In other words: tax evasion. Eat the rich.
It’s called “tax avoidance” when you’re a billionaire and it’s legal
From what I understand - avoidance is using legal means to avoid paying tax, while evasion is using all the other means to evade getting taxed altogether.
You know what else is legal? Denying healthcare claims automatically. When the laws stop serving the people, don’t expect people to follow them out of the goodness of their hearts.
It’s called optimal accounting in my classes. It’s not only legal but also annoying as shit when having to audit a company as a project.
“Moving,” as though billionaires live in “one place.”
All he did was change his primary address, and maybe buy property in Florida.
Bought, and then immediately mortgaged the entire value at 0% interest.
Easy! All you have to do is buy a mortgage company!
Yeah I was going to say he didn’t move anywhere.
I’m wondering how that private island community will fare in a few years.
It’s scuba tours all the way down
Washington … recently enacted a 7% levy on long-term capital gains of more than $250,000
I wonder how many people are actually going to stay in Washington state and pay this. I would definitely move if I were Bezos, and probably even if I had the $250,000 minimum (with the assumption that I was cashing out since I was retiring and so there wasn’t a job tying me to any particular location).
Enough stayed in Massachusetts for it to be a resounding success there:
Switzerland has a wealth tax as one of the few countries in the world, and wealthy people are flocking there. I can be done when you do it right.
I thought we might have some cantons without it, but PwC says you’re right it’s all of Switzerland (the rates vary)
https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/switzerland/individual/other-taxes
Washington … recently enacted a 7% levy on long-term capital gains of more than $250,000
To complete the picture on that, those that earn more than $533,400/year are subject to long term capital gains rate of 20%.
Example: If you held stock of $30m for more than one year’s time, and it increased in value to $50m when you sold it a year later, the capital gain from that sale would be $20m. Because your annual income is almost certainly more than $533,400/year, you’d have to pay 20% tax, on the gain. That tax would be $4m to the federal government and in Washington state, you’d pay a 7% tax on the $20m capital gain of an additional $1.4m to the state of Washington. So a grand total of $5.4m in capital gains if you lived in Washington or $4m if you lived in Florida.
Since his move in early 2024, Bezos has sold an estimated $13.6 billion worth of Amazon stock, according to Forbes.
To those that say that rich people only get loans on assets instead of selling assets and getting capital gains this article disagrees with you. So much so that Bezos tried to escape them. So an increase in capital gains at a federal level would tax these billionaires.
edit: removed one incorrect sentence when I switched my example numbers.
Meaning to have a long term capital gain of $250,000 you would have had to sell long term assets that gained more than $12.5m
That is not how this works, any capital gains (which IS the asset values increase) above $250,000 would be subject to the levy regardless of the individuals federal capital gains tax rate.
Your example mostly holds up so I’m not sure if you simply made an error here as you do seem to have a grasp of it.
You’re right. I changed my example numbers halfway through writing the post to make it more clear. I thought I got all the old references. I missed that one. I’ve removed that line now to make a fully accurate post.
Everyone else has to start there due to Amazons RTO policy.
Fair. Although you aren’t really struggling at that amount of wealth, and washington is very very nice.
Couldn’t pay me to live in Florida. Hope it falls into the sea.
I moved from Florida to Washington (then later the Midwest). I’ll never return to Florida, but am constantly dreaming I’ll earn enough to be able to afford Washington again
Oregon awaits…
I’ll never return to Florida
May I ask why?
My upper-middle-class friends in Florida live in a picture-perfect suburb within walking distance of a beautiful beach, and their house was quite affordable by my NYC standards. They vote for Democrats but they don’t appear to be personally affected by the fact that Florida is a Republican state much more than they would be if they didn’t live in Florida. They have a group of friends who aren’t Trump supporters, and the few Trump supporters I had casual conversations with when I visited were nice in-person. My friend says that people look much more at class signifiers than at race. He’s clearly a white-collar family man and he has not had any problems despite being a dark-skinned immigrant.
I get why the people targeted by Florida Republicans wouldn’t want to live in Florida, but you’re talking about earning more money. My impression is that you would be fine if you earned enough to live a middle-class lifestyle unless your appearance clearly violated the social norms. Some people will think that I’m callously ignoring the plight of poorer Floridians, but in NYC I callously ignore people who are even worse-off all the time. (I don’t think a person who isn’t a charity worker can realistically spend much time in Manhattan without learning to pretend that homeless people aren’t there.) I don’t think my plight-ignoring would be substantially worse if I moved to Florida.
My upper-middle-class friends
Do you think that might have something to do with why it’s so nice for them?
Well yeah, that’s what I explicitly talk about.
It could possibly be that the person you were asking why to isn’t upper middle class. Considering the vast majority of Americans are not.
Which part, exactly?
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If you sell your house for $250K more than you bought it you may well be struggling. For example, if you bought it 30 years ago for $20K and have to sell it for $300K because you have no income
I left California because it charged the same rate on capital gains. Like you could owe nothing federally, but have to pay state income tax. It was also more annoying because I had to mail it! 12 pages don’t fit into an envelope so I didn’t even send them my full return
Oh no. A rich person had to pay taxes on their gambling and it was annoying. The horror.
