Founder of Iconic Seattle Business Says ‘See Ya Emerald City’!

Yesterday the founder of one of Seattle’s largest, and arguably most profitable, business said he was leaving the Emerald City and heading South.

Jeff Bezos started Amazon in his garage in Bellevue in 1994.  On his Instagram page, Bezos bid farewell to the city he has called home for most of his adult life.

The Move to Miami

Other than growing up in Vice City, Bezos has recently plunked down a healthy amount of cash on a pair of properties in anticipation of the move.  In August the third richest man in the world (valued at $156 billion) purchased a 9,259 square foot mansion for $68 million.  Two months later he laid out another $79 million for a mansion just shy of 20,000 square feet.

It’s hard to doubt the desire to be closer to his parents, and his space company, Blue Origin, doing more out of Cape Canaveral, there may be other things that factored in to Bezos’ bolting for greener pastures…that being keeping more of his green.  Washington State’s capital gains tax would hit his wallet for $70 million for every $1 billion in stock sold.  That doesn’t count other taxable assets under the law.

Florida also has another monetary attraction…an unlimited homestead exemption.  Washington State has a $125,000 exemption, but it one of only a handful of States where the exemption doesn’t not provide property tax relief.  I hear you, not a lot of empathy for a multi-billionaire when it comes to taxes, but no one wants pay out anything they think isn’t fair, regardless of if you can afford it or not.

Not Bezos’ First Move

Bezos may have laid some of this groundwork in 2017 when he announced the search for a second world headquarters for Amazon.  That opened earlier this year in Arlington, VA. Some read it as hedging options as taxes continued to grow in Washington State, which is gaining a reputation as being one of the least business friendly States in the US.