May 21, 2026
As Americans continue to battle rising everyday costs and the wealth divide broadens to what feels like an unbridgeable abyss, sentiments toward the ultra-rich have palpably soured.
Citizens may still follow the every move of their favorite movie stars, style icons, live performers and social media influencers, but somehow, when it comes to CEOs, the support does not translate.
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There seems to be a general, very understandable air of celebration surrounding the new or newly-increased taxes on the wealthy that are popping up all over the nation, from proposed or realized millionaire’s taxes in Maine, Washington, Massachusetts and more to New York City’s pied-à-terre tax on high-value second homes — about which one Instagram video from Mayor Zohran Mamdani reached 38.4 million views, more than any of his other posts on the platform by a mile.
But Jeff Bezos, one of the nation’s most famous billionaires, has a different suggestion to help mitigate our progressively K-shaped economy and ease the financial stresses of low-income residents: simply remove the taxes on the other end of the spectrum.
Taxing someone making $50,000 is “absurd”
In an episode of CNBC’s Squawk Box, the Amazon founder floated the concept of not just lowering, but completely cutting taxes for workers under a certain income threshold, with the argument that the aggregate tax contribution of lower earners is already negligible enough that eliminating it wouldn’t be catastrophic.
“When people are starting out and they’re struggling, stop taxing them, we don’t need it,” he said during the conversation on Wednesday morning, reflecting on how his own parents, born into meagre means and amid tough circumstances, were able to “bring themselves up.”
“I want to make sure that the people struggling today have the chance to do that too, to bring themselves up. Maybe they [or] one of their kids will be the next Steve Jobs, I don’t know. But we can give them a better chance by eliminating their tax bill,” he said.
He leaned on examples such as a teacher or nurse in New York with a $75,000 salary or an Amazon employee who earns around $50,000 per year — people who he believes it is “absurd” to tax.
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Multi-faceted problems require multi-faceted solutions
At the same time, Bezos argued that simply taxing the wealthy more isn’t the straightforward panacea that people believe it to be, something that has been proven in cases where wealth taxes have led to lower direct proceeds than imagined, indirect losses and/or other economic pains.
“I pay billions of dollars in taxes. If people want me to pay more billions… don’t pretend that’s going to solve the problem. You could double the taxes that I pay and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens,” he said.
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Instead, he criticized things like corporate subsidies, corporate and union influence over public policy, and the counterproductive levels of bureaucracy that are ingrained in the current system, along with the taxes on bottom earners.
“It doesn’t make any sense for the government to subsidize certain agricultural crops, real estate transactions, Hollywood films… the tax code is 10,000-plus pages long because it has built-in corporate loopholes,” he asserted.
Increasing the burden on an already disproportionately taxed demographic
The numbers that the e-commerce magnate went on to cite definitely make his overarching argument worthy of consideration: the bottom 50% of earners in the US contribute only 3% to overall federal income tax revenue from the 12% of total income that they represent.
Relieving this segment of the population from income taxes would no doubt have a monumental impact on their quality of life, potentially without making a magnitude of a dent in federal tax earnings.
American taxpayers in the top 1% provide roughly 38% of all federal income tax revenue, despite accounting for around 21% of total income. Bezos argued that relieving lower earners of taxes would need to come alongside broader structural reforms, including reducing corporate subsidies and eliminating loopholes embedded throughout the tax code.
Despite the earnestness of the discussion, Bezos exuded a positive energy throughout, touting America’s immense entrepreneurial dynamism, wealth and access to capital for aspiring business leaders at present, while stating he would happily politically advocate for his idea of tax reform.
“This is the best time to be alive in America and we should have so much optimism about the future,” he said.
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Becky Robertson is a senior staff reporter with Moneywise and a lifelong writer. Along with years in the journalism industry at outlets such as blogTO and Quill & Quire, she's participated in writing residencies at the Banff Centre and Writing Workshops Paris. With 33 countries visited, she finds travel to be one of her greatest inspirations.
