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Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) founder and executive chair Jeff Bezos has been cashing in on the e-commerce giant’s rally this year, regulatory filings showed, offloading nearly 24M shares worth more than $4B this month.
The share sales took place over four trading days. The billionaire, who hadn’t sold Amazon (AMZN) stock since 2021, now holds over 964M shares in the company.
The moves come nearly two weeks after Amazon (AMZN) disclosed that Bezos adopted a trading plan that would let him sell as many as 50M shares, or about $8.6B, before January 31, 2025.
Interestingly, Bezos adopted the trading plan on November 8, just days after he announced that he was shifting base from Seattle to Miami. While he said the move was to be closer to his parents and his spaceflight company Blue Origin’s operations in Florida, the timing suggests it could’ve been for tax purposes.
Washington had imposed a 7% capital gains tax in 2022 on gains of over $250K for those residing there. Florida, on the other hand, does not have state taxes on capital gains.
This means that for the 50M shares that Bezos plans to sell over the next year, he will likely save at least $610M in taxes, according to CNBC calculations.
Amazon (AMZN) had climbed 13.4% this year up to Monday (February 12), the last day on which Bezos sold shares. The stock slipped 2.2% on Tuesday.
Bezos is currently the world’s second-richest person with a net worth of $193B, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, only behind Elon Musk.