Jeff Bezos says there is ‘no truth’ to the ‘buy borrow die’ tax strategy

Key points

• Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos said a controversial tax strategy used by the wealthy to borrow against assets to lower their income taxes is largely a "myth." "There's no truth to this 'buy, borrow, die' thing," Bezos told CNBC's Andrew Ross Sorkin Wednesday in a wide-ranging interview.
• "I don't even know where this comes from." The "buy, borrow, die" strategy refers to the practice of wealthy founders or investors borrowing against their assets and using the loan proceeds as income.
• Since the loan isn't considered taxable income, their income stream avoids tax.
• Thanks to the step-up in basis tax provision, any gain in the value of their assets during their lifetime is also erased upon their death, avoiding any capital gains tax.
• The most famous practitioners of the strategy are Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and the world's richest man, Elon Musk.