{"id":238120,"date":"2026-05-20T15:52:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/238120\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T15:52:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T15:52:10","slug":"bezos-backs-controversial-nyc-tax-targeting-ultra-rich-homeowners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/238120\/","title":{"rendered":"Bezos Backs Controversial NYC Tax Targeting Ultra-Rich Homeowners"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed tax on luxury second homes<\/a> has an unlikely defender: Jeff Bezos.<\/p>\n

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The Amazon founder compared the pied-\u00e0-terre tax \u2014 which has been criticized by other prominent businesspeople \u2014 to a tourist tax in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“Taxes on out-of-towners are very popular taxes. That’s why there are hotel taxes,” Bezos said.<\/p>\n

“There are limits. If you raise the hotel taxes too much, the tourists stop coming,” he added. “So you have to be judicious, but I think that the pied-\u00e0-terre tax is a fine thing for New York to do.”<\/p>\n

The pied-\u00e0-terre tax<\/a> would apply to New York City properties valued at more than $5 million that are not occupied as a primary residence. The tax would affect owners whose primary residence is outside the city.<\/p>\n

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul originally proposed the tax, which was later backed by Mamdani.<\/p>\n

Bezos, who has several New York properties within his real estate portfolio<\/a> but whose main residence is in Florida, would be affected by the tax.<\/p>\n

The tax, which requires legislative approval, has been criticized by President Donald Trump and other prominent businesspeople, including hedge fund manager Bill Ackman. <\/p>\n

In a video posted online, Mamdani pointed to billionaire Citadel CEO Ken Griffin’s<\/a> $238 million penthouse, purchased in 2019, as an example of the kind of property that would be subject to the tax.<\/p>\n

Griffin’s deputy<\/a> at Citadel said in a memo to staff that the company might rethink a $6 billion redevelopment project for one of its midtown offices after Mamdani’s “shameful” comments.<\/p>\n

Although he described the pied-\u00e0-terre tax as a “fine thing,” Bezos defended Griffin.<\/p>\n

“Ken Griffin isn’t a villain. He hasn’t hurt anybody. He’s not hurting New York. In fact, quite the opposite,” Bezos said in the interview.<\/p>\n

“That piece of it isn’t right, and there was no reason to do that,” he added, referring to the singling out of Griffin’s property.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposed tax on luxury second homes has an unlikely defender: Jeff Bezos. Loading audio narration……\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238121,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[80158,93048,10865,18649,1445,9,56,63,65,64,93047,80216,8812,93046,11467,5260,93049,24601,23266],"class_list":["post-238120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-bezos","tag-fine-thing","tag-interview","tag-ken-griffin","tag-mamdani","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-other-prominent-businesspeople","tag-primary-residence","tag-property","tag-second-home-tax","tag-tax","tag-taxis","tag-tourist-tax","tag-villain","tag-wednesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238120\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}