It is amazing to us that in all the reporting on Jeff Bezos’s announcement that he is relocating from Seattle to Miami – virtually all the news outlets buried the obvious lead. Bezos will save billions of dollars in taxes by moving from a high-tax blue state, to a low-tax red state.

This wasn’t mentioned in the Yahoo Finance story above. Nor by the AP. Nor the NY Times. Nor CNN. Nor the Seattle papers. (The only major exception was the WSJ.).

Sorry, Seattle, it wasn’t JUST the sunshine that has brought him to South Florida.

When Bezos built Amazon in Seattle, Washington had no income tax, no estate tax, and no capital gains tax. But in recent years the progressives took charge with their “soak the rich” agenda.

Now Washington has the highest estate tax in the country, has just adopted a 7% capital gains tax, AND the legislature is debating a 1% annual wealth tax. Gee: Who do you think they had in mind to pay that?

Bezos is estimated to have a net wealth of $150 billion. Raise your hand if you think that it’s just a coincidence that right when the progressives started pushing this goofy wealth tax talk, he started looking to get out of Dodge?

The Tax Foundation estimates the Amazon founder could save as much as $1 billion a year by living in Florida. Ironically, Bezos leans left in his politics, but he doesn’t want his fortune to go the government. Bezos said in his announcement that “Seattle will always have a piece of my heart.” But not a piece of his wallet.
It reminds us of the old George Gilder saying: “High tax rates don’t redistribute income, they redistribute people.”