Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced on Thursday that he will be moving to Miami, where he previously attended high school, after living in Seattle for nearly three decades.
In a post on Instagram, the third-richest person on the planet said he and his fiancée were relocating in order to be closer to his parents. However, he also made note of a business dimension at play behind the decision.
“Blue Origin’s operations are increasingly shifting to Cape Canaveral. For all that, I’m planning to return to Miami, leaving the Pacific Northwest,” Bezos wrote.
Bezos founded Amazon in Seattle in 1994. He initially worked out of his garage with just several employees before what started out as an online bookstore transformed over a number of years into the e-commerce giant known worldwide.
“I’ve lived in Seattle longer than I’ve lived anywhere else and have so many amazing memories here. As exciting as the move is, it’s an emotional decision for me. Seattle, you will always have a piece of my heart,” Bezos wrote.
Like Elon Musk, Bezos has branched out into the commercial aerospace industry with his company Blue Origin, manufacturing suborbital rockets and reusable space travel technology. Blue Origin was founded in 2000 in Kent, Washington.
According to the Miami Herald, Bezos has already dropped roughly $147 million on two neighboring mansions totaling 28,323 square feet of living space in Indian Creek Village, a man-made island on Biscayne Bay less than a couple of miles away from Miami Beach.
The move stands to save the billionaire quite a lot of money. Washington State recently adopted a 7% annual tax on capital gains in excess of $250,000. Florida, on the other hand, has no state income or capital gains taxes.
CNBC wealth reporter Robert Frank suggested on social media that Bezos was moving because of the tax savings he would see in Florida, claiming the billionaire would “owe $70 million in state taxes [in Washington] for every $1 billion of Amazon stock he sells. And he sells a lot.”
