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The Amazon founder saw an almost 10-figure savings by moving south.
(finance.yahoo.com)
"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
In other words: tax evasion. Eat the rich.
It’s called “tax avoidance” when you’re a billionaire and it’s legal
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.
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.
It's called that if you're not a billionaire and it's legal, too. Taking your personal deduction is tax avoidance.
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
Everyone else has to start there due to Amazons RTO policy.
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.
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.
Which part, exactly?
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
This does not affect returns from a primary residence sale.
I would stay. I have no issue paying taxes as I believe it is for the betterment of society.
My issue is others not paying their fair share and that doesn’t mean I would join them if I couldn’t beat them.
I'm proud in a way of how much I pay in taxes. It makes me feel like more of a productive member of society. However, if there was something completely legal and relatively easy which I could do to reduce the amount of taxes I paid, I don't think doing it would be contrary to the notion of paying my fair share. Washington gets to set its tax policy, and I get to choose where I live. IMO, leaving Washington because of its tax policy has no moral implications. It's no different than leaving because I don't like the weather.
...you don't cash out your entire retirement accounts but when you retire.
250k in capital gains, and instead of the usual 10%, you're paying 17% on it. Because that's a shit ton of stock to sell in one year
…you don’t cash out your entire retirement accounts but when you retire.
No but you might move your money to a different, lower-risk investment. With that said, my post was poorly-written and the part about retirement was extraneous. I should have just said
with the assumption that there wasn’t a job tying me to any particular location
Moving money within a retirement account, or even between retirement accounts does not incur capital gains, either.
Canada enacted a capital gains tax and nobody moved (though obviously it's harder to move countries)
Quite a few. That still works out to being cheaper than having to pay states income tax on most states and Washington is a hell of a lot nicer than the states that don't tax income. Also, this affects very few people.
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.
The point isn't that you should feel sorry for him. It's that he didn't pay the tax but did take his money elsewhere. I don't think California benefits when that happens.
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2024
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