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.
Since his move in early 2024, Bezos has sold an estimated $13.6 billion worth of Amazon stock, according to Forbes. With its lack of not only a state income tax but also a capital gains tax, Florida is much more friendly to billionaires like Bezos who are selling off their assets than his former home state of Washington, which recently enacted a 7% levy on long-term capital gains of more than $250,000. Had Bezos still lived in Washington when he sold his stock, he would have had a $954 million state capital gains tax bill, Forbes calculated (he may still owe around $3.2 billion to the federal government, depending on other deductions and credits).
Bezos announced his move from Seattle to Indian Creek, Fla., at the end of last year, in an Instagram post that characterized the move as both personal and professional: He wanted to be closer to his parents in Miami, and to Blue Origin, his aerospace company, in Cape Canaveral. Though he didn’t explicitly mention the tax savings, wealth managers at the time told Fortune it was obvious he was poised to save a pretty penny—especially as the Sunshine State’s lack of income tax or capital gains tax is a big reason many ultrawealthy people have flocked there (and continue to do so) in recent years.
Washington State enacted the capital gains tax, which recently survived a repeal effort, in 2022 to help pay for early learning and childcare programs and other school projects.
The Amazon founder has made the most of his move to the Miami area, spending nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on three mansions in the so-called billionaire bunker of Indian Creek Village, a nearby island accessible only via a guarded bridge. He counts Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, Carl Icahn, and Tom Brady as neighbors in the exclusive enclave, where he lives with his fiancée, Lauren Sánchez.
Another benefit for the ultrarich: Florida does not have an estate tax, which could save his heirs billions more.
“For someone with that much wealth, just the estate tax savings alone can be $10 billion, never mind the income tax savings, which is ongoing,” John Pantekidis, managing partner and general counsel at TwinFocus, which manages over $7 billion for ultrahigh-net-worth families, told Fortune earlier this year. “Florida is very, very favorable for someone like Jeff Bezos. They make it very cost-effective for folks like Jeff to live down there. It’s ideal, it’s nirvana.”
Despite cashing out billions in stock and no longer working as Amazon CEO, Bezos is still ranked as the second wealthiest person on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after Elon Musk, currently worth an estimated $250 billion. Bezos’s tax savings of $1 billion is about 0.4% of his current net worth.
