American entrepreneur and founder of online retailer Amazon Jeff Bezos has completed the announced sale of the company’s shares for a total of $8.5 billion. He made the announcement in a mandatory filing to regulators on Tuesday. Bezos is currently the world’s third-richest person with an estimated fortune of $191 billion, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires ranking.
Moving
Since he moved from Seattle, Washington, to Miami, Florida, last year, he will save nearly $600 million in taxes on the $8.5 billion stock sale, the BBC reports. Proceeds over $250,000 from the sale of stocks or other long-term investments are taxed at a seven per cent rate in Washington state. By contrast, Florida has no state income or capital gains taxes. Bezos, however, must tax the proceeds from stock sales at the federal level.
When Bezos announced he was moving to Florida, it sparked speculation about whether he was doing so specifically because of the potential tax bill he would face in Washington state. There, the local government has passed a new tax on the sale of large blocks of stock. Bezos is selling Amazon shares at a time when their price has firmed up significantly. It has risen by more than 76 per cent in the past year.
More reasons
Last November, Bezos said his parents had recently moved back to Miami, where he spent part of his childhood, and that he wanted to be close to them. But Bezos also has his Blue Origin space project there, which is gradually moving to Florida’s Cape Canaveral.
“Lauren and I love Miami,” Bezos wrote on Instagram at the time, referring to his fiancée Lauren Sánchez. “That’s why I plan to return to Miami and leave the Pacific Northwest,” he added. But even after the announced stock sale, he remains Amazon’s largest shareholder.
Amazon is the world’s largest online retailer and has been operating in the Czech Republic since 2013. The company opened its first distribution centre in the country in 2015 in the village of Dobrovíz.
Source: ČTK
