Why did Jeff Bezos keep a relatively low annual pay of $80,000 (P4.6 million) or $6,666 (P391,000) monthly?
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world, has kept his annual salary at $80,000 (P4.6 million)—or about $6,666 monthly (P391,000)—for decades.
But why did he keep a relatively low base pay for his post?
In a sit-down interview with The New York Times, Bezos explained that as a founder, his view was that he "already owned a significant amount of the company."
"I just didn’t feel good about taking more," he said.
Nevertheless, Bezos has a net worth of $251 billion (P14.7 trillion) to date, Bloomberg's billionaire index showed. He's ranked second in the world's most affluent list.
According to a calculation from entrepreneur magazine Inc., Bezos made nearly $8 million (P469.9 million) per hour in 2023.
“I had plenty of incentive,” he told the Times. “I owned more than 10% of the company. I just felt, how could I possibly need more incentive?”
After founding Amazon on July 5, 1994, and stepping down as chief executive officer on its 27th founding anniversary in 2021, Bezos has periodically sold his stock in the company.
Finance publication Barron's reported that Bezos intends to sell 25 million shares before the end of 2025.
Bezos told the Times that company founders, or "owner-operators" as he calls them, build wealth "not by getting more equity."
"They just want to make the equity they have more valuable," he said. "So I never felt icky about it and I’m very proud of that decision."
He said he also asked the board's compensation committee to not give him any more compensation.
ProPublica, in a 2021 review of the Internal Revenue Service's decades-long data from the United States' wealthiest businessmen, found that Bezos didn't pay any federal income taxes between 2007 and 2011.
The New York-based nonprofit investigative journalism organization also found that Bezos avoided federal income taxes those years partly because he reported investment losses that were greater than his $80,000 salary.
Bezos's worth is mostly tied to his investments, ProPublica said, and if he doesn't sell, his holdings aren't taxable. In doing so, he's likely saving up millions, if not billions.
During its foundation, Amazon originally started as a marketplace for books and gradually expanded to include different product categories.
It has since engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence.
The multinational technology company has a market value of $2.3 trillion to date.
