Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, just snapped up a "newly completed waterfront mansion" on the gated, Miami-area island village of Indian Creek, The Wall Street Journal exclusively reported.

While the WSJ wasn't able to confirm the sale price of the 2-acre property, Miami realtors expected it to fetch between $150 million and $200 million, citing the recent sale of a similarly sized empty lot for $105 million.

Zuckerberg is far from the only billionaire flocking to Indian Creek; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google cofounder Larry Page, and investor Carl Icahn have also secured properties on the human-made barrier island.

According to the Wall Street Journal, local realtor Danny Hertzberg blamed a small proposed wealth tax in California for an alleged exodus to Indian Creek, a community often called the "billionaire bunker."

"The 5% tax in California is really driving out people in a major way," Hertzberg claimed, reiterating a common but erroneous belief that wealth taxes drive the ultra-rich away.

A search for California's proposed wealth tax led solely to scores of news stories — not about the proposal itself, but rather the potentially "disastrous" exodus that billionaires claimed would result. As Kiplinger noted in January, California lawmakers were merely "flirting with" the idea.

Moreover, Gov. Gavin Newsom frantically signaled his opposition and "vowed to stop" the one-time tax, according to The New York Times.

Nevertheless, stories about a purported wealth withdrawal dominated the news cycle. 

On Feb. 8, the Santa Barbara News-Press covered ongoing tech titan tantrums over the proposal, wryly noting that claims of an economic exodus were perhaps overblown, given that the "tax hasn't even happened" yet.

The News-Press said there was "almost no historical evidence to support the idea" that wealth taxes drive the wealthy away, citing an in-depth Center on Budget and Policy Priorities report. Urban policy analyst Peter Dreier told the outlet that billionaires were "always crying wolf."

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"It happens whenever politicians or movements suggest reforms that would … make them act more responsibly towards consumers, workers, the environment or the public interest," he said.  

"Whenever business doesn't like being held accountable … they say it'll kill jobs or that the businesses will move out. Ninety-five percent of the time they're lying," Dreier continued, a claim backed up by the fact that no such exodus occurred after Massachusetts adopted a similar tax.

Dreier's observations were neatly reflected in a controversy involving Indian Creek, after its billionaire residents strong-armed the state into bending to their will on a sewage drainage issue at the expense of people living in nearby Surfside.

Ultimately, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang — one of the 10 wealthiest people in the world — said he was "perfectly fine" with paying his fair share if the billionaire tax proposal prevailed.

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