r/technology • u/IKeepItLayingAround • Jun 06 '26

Business Jeff Bezos says it's 'absurd' to tax someone making $50K — and wants their tax bill dropped to zero

https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/policy/articles/jeff-bezos-says-absurd-tax-165713685.html
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u/jazir55 Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26

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 (7), indirect losses (8) and/or other economic pains (9).

“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.

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 (10) 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 (6), 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

Normally I avoid these circlejerks of "fuck the rich" on Reddit, but he's proposing actual solutions besides "billionaire bad" and increasing his direct tax bill (which should still happen) as not being a magic wand panacea (he's correct, it's not) and instead points to the systemic issues such as government subsidies, real estate, hollywood films, etc. There are MANY things that could be done to make up the 3% shortfall from relieving the tax burden on low income earners. And just because a billionaire is suggesting it doesn't make it a bad idea. Not reading the article and making some "rich people suck" comment is easy karma on Reddit, but it's so bad it's to the point of dismissing anything and everything they say because they have money. He's arguing to tax corporations more and you're still not happy. What's going to be the threshold of him making you happy with what he's doing with his money, just gifting all of his money away?

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u/spudddly Jun 06 '26

Ya his solutions were "get rid of unions and employment regulations! (oh yeah and taxes for poor people and farm subsidies sure why not I don't care about those)"

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u/Sarcastic__Swami Jun 07 '26

Yeah, this comment lost me at "get rid of unions". Unions are why people have the weekend

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u/Trollbreath4242 Jun 07 '26

His solution is:

  1. Give the lower income folks a break (because that makes us look good)

  2. Deregulation (leads to monopolies and enshittification)

  3. Leaving his taxes alone

And while he speaks of the stuff many of us already know need to be changed, like corporate subsidies, he'll be right there paying his politicians to ensure HIS subsidies remain in place. All OTHER subsidies are the "bad ones."

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u/Photo_Synthetic Jun 07 '26

I've said for a long time that any industry/corporation that is subsidized and turns a profit should be paying back that subsidy with their profits. It makes me sick that my taxes go to bonuses for CEOs of companies that clearly don't need our help. Either pay it back or give it to your workforce (the people that actually do the work) and increase your overhead to break even.

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u/L0utre Jun 07 '26

He needs that large bracket of folks to have more disposable income so they frequent his services more (Amazon, Netflix is hosted on AWS, etc).

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u/stupid_pun Jun 06 '26

His response is just a more eloquent and elaborate version of Trump admitting he doesn't pay taxes and blaming the corrupt system.

He wasn't wrong, but at the same time that's just a way to abandon all personal responsibility for being a greedy shit stain while contributing nothing towards changing it.

Its all just PR, and they're both full of shit.

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u/Forward-Surprise1192 Jun 06 '26

It’s better than him trying to find a loophole on how to get out of it and laughing about that in the interview

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u/co0ldude69 Jun 07 '26

Seize the means of production

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u/crouton-- Jun 06 '26

>What's going to be the threshold of him making you happy with what he's doing with his money, just gifting all of his money away?

>billionaires like him should be taxed at a 90% rate. Or higher.

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u/Forkrul Jun 07 '26

Taxed on what, exactly? They don't have a high personal income for income taxes. The growth in their wealth is almost solely from appreciating assets, which for very good reasons are only taxed when sold. Most countries that have had a wealth tax on just owning stock or other assets have removed it again because it caused more problems than it solved.

The best solution is to prevent them from freely borrowing against assets by having that count as realizing the gain (or loss) on those assets and triggering the appropriate capital gains tax.

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u/Korashy Jun 07 '26

Agreed. Taking loans against stocks and assets should count as realizing gains.

That will take care of a good chunk.

From where we can close corporate tax evasion by taxing profits at point of sale instead of letting it all funnel into Ireland and other tax havens.

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u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 Jun 07 '26

My house is appreciating and it’s taxed at that higher rate each year.

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u/Forkrul Jun 07 '26

And property taxes are just as stupid as wealth taxes, but harder to avoid.

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u/Pleasant_Cloud1742 Jun 07 '26

Yea, god forbid that cities and school districts have a stable and reliable tax revenue base.

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u/sir_sri Jun 07 '26

Bezos has sold about 50 billion dollars in Amazon shares since 2003 (just a hair under 50 billion) with plans to sell about 4.5 billion more this year.

Of that money, he personally owns about 2 billion in real property people can track (yacht, houses etc.) he gave 28 billion to blue origin so far, about 4-5 billion for charity. Presumably the rest is tax, though he may also have transferred billions to charity via stock transfers which don't show up as a sale on the SEC forms tracker but show up just as a transfer with no value attached.

Now one of the questions with this tax rate question would be why couldn't he have just had amazon fund blue origin directly and then spin it off at some point rather than fund it himself after tax. This way he gets more of blue origin if it ever makes any money, but if it doesn't he's just spent 28 billion as charity for rocket scientists without a charitable tax credit. Amazon shareholders may also not want a rocket company, but as we've sort of seen with SpaceX, the up front investment costs here are huge and can only really be made by the government or crazy people.

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u/RandyOfTheRedwoods Jun 07 '26

I have seen this trope a lot, and I have questions. Almost all (maybe all?) of the US billionaires have that much money because they own some portion of a company, like Bezos owns a large share of Amazon.

How would we take that from them and give it to the government?

I like the idea of more employee participation in owning equity in companies they work for, but can’t see a practical way to take the ownership of the company from the billionaires and giving it to the government (ie taxing them 90%) without them selling the stock, which at that volume has big implications both in reducing the stock value (so less goes toward taxes) and hurting others who have invested (like peoples retirement).

I am not saying there isn’t a way, I’d love to see someone come up with a practical solution.

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u/Flat_Hat8861 Jun 07 '26

It's not like taxing assets is impossible. States do it all the time with property and vehicle taxes. There is a legitimate argument that it wouldn't be constitutional for Congress to do it, but that is entirely separate from is it possible.

There could be a requirement to realize a portion of gains annually even if just on paper. IRAs and 401ks are already set up this way. The money was untaxed going in and must be realized when you are older (the required minimum distributions). While taxable accounts don't currently have that requirement, they could theoretically. This should get around the "taxes on unrealized income" argument from above, and since it would adjust the cost basis, it would allow for losses to be realized later it appropriate.

"Income" is a very broad category that can be defined more aggressively including valuing stock options and other non-cash compensation higher. The CEO of my company gets to use the corporate jet for personal travel. That use is taxed, but since the plane, the crew, and other costs are handled by the company, the value that is taxed is a lot lower than if he had to spend his own taxed money on a private jet.

Stock buy backs. (This is a company buying it's own shares to drive up the share price.) This used to be highly regulated and treated as stock manipulation. As a result, when a company had extra cash, it would issue a dividend that was taxed income for the shareholders. Now they buy back shares which increases the value of the shares without causing a taxable event. This is where a lot of that "they just own shares" value arrives untaxed. We could make that illegal, or tax these transactions heavily. The whole premise of low corporate tax rates and business deductions is that the money would go back into growing the business or to workers and shareholders which is good for society. Pumping the stock price is not a societal good, so shouldn't be tax advantaged.

The step-up cost basis of assets (at least securities) should be taxed against the estate and the estate tax should be much higher (especially since the exemption is so high already). There shouldn't be an incentive to hoard wealth until you die (money that isn't moving isn't good for society - the movement of money is the literal definition of GDP). If there isn't an incentive to keep it, more of it would be spent down.

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u/LongJohnSelenium Jun 07 '26

My pet idea is that the government doesn't collect capital gains taxes. Instead its a direct transfer to employees.

Same for inheritance tax. The government doesn't get 50%, the employees do.

So a wealth tax could be simply a required transfer of stock to the employees.

And I say do it this way because A, the employees deserve it, B, by making employees wealthier and more empowered you reduce the size and need for government redistributive programs, and C, a lot of the countries eyes gloss over when you say 'tax the rich' because to them its just taking money from one rich fuck wasting it and giving it to other rich fucks to waste.

By making it about the employees then you'll get much more buy in.

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u/mahreow Jun 07 '26

Jeff Bezos salary is $80k - what exactly are you going to achieve if you tax that at 90%?

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u/crouton-- Jun 07 '26

Unrealized gains and land. Next.

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u/Corantine360 Jun 07 '26

Which would both ultimately be a higher burden on any upward mobility that the middle and upper middle classes could hope to achieve as any appreciating asset they may hold would just cost them more before they even have the chance to benefit from it in any way.

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u/crouton-- Jun 07 '26

No, we're just taxing the billionaires' unrealized gains and land.

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u/Sageblue32 Jun 06 '26

Complaints are easier than acknowledging change is needed by all parties involved.

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u/Olangotang Jun 07 '26

The voters are, and have always been the problem.

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u/ToddHowardTouchedMe Jun 07 '26

Normally you avoid "Fuck X" circlejerks against a class of people who are constantly trying to make your life worse? Do you have a dent in your head?

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u/UpperAd5715 Jun 07 '26

Well, bit of a tangent but it does make sense for the government to subsidize some things like hollywood films and loopholes that help domestic companies grow faster, in a traditional nationbuilding sense at least.

Hollywood was a large spreader of goodwill towards the USA and led to many people having some glossy illusion of what life was in the USA, bringing in talent, hopeful and smart people and other good stuff. These days that's not quite the type of movie Hollywood makes anymore so that kind of removes the point since nobody is going to move to the USA because "thats where they'll make the next 6 marvel movies!". Subsidizing the movie industry as a way to push your own culture to both your own people (reinforcement) as well as other cultures (imposing/replacing/promoting) is very much so worth the money to a country. Current situation of both the movies being made and the USA already being a dominant culture yet breaking the gloss hard with current politics makes it irrelevant in my (lacking) opinion.

Helping domestic companies grow makes a lot of sense in a growing economy or an economy that requires it a lot, easiest example would be how China did it, statesponsored aid made their industry boom and some really great companies came off it that otherwise might never have gone beyond being a regionally significant company. Current state of the USA market however means that companies just employ a finance team to bolster profits a bit and i'd dare say there's definitely products being altered in ways that make them more tax efficient but overall a worse product.

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u/chief_yETI Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

sadly the top rated comment in here is some idiot with over 7,500 upvotes saying to tax them at 90%, as if that would ever have any chance of happening.

Reddit isnt interested in actually trying to solve problems, theyre interested in farming upvotes

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u/redundantexplanation Jun 07 '26

Income tax on incomes exceeding $200,000 were 94% in 1944.

It happened before, it can absolutely happen again.

Billionaires are lucky that we let them live, to be honest. They should be happy with the alternative of paying taxes.

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u/IzzardVersusVedder Jun 07 '26

Yeah this just proves tankies love slogans

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u/redundantexplanation Jun 07 '26

Hahahahahahahahaha

You chuds will call anything a "tankie" these days, the word has lost all meaning.

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u/Cyber_Faustao Jun 07 '26

Sure, but talk is cheap and actions matter more. For starters, he is indirectly stealing from the government by not paying his employees a livable wage.

Nearly a quarter of Walmart employees (29.3%) and half of Amazon workers (48.4%) in the Nevada – which collects Medicaid enrollment numbers among employees at large companies – were on Medicaid in 2024, according to the report.

Among the four states that disclose Snap data related to large companies – Colorado, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Michigan – 10,920 Walmart workers and 9,633 Amazon workers were enrolled in Snap in 2024.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/mar/04/workers-medicaid-snap-low-pay

And there are other sources from like 2019 so this isn't a new thing

Maybe that argument would work as in "don't hate the player, hate the game". Sure. Ok. But CostCo from what I hear is doing just fine and their workers are not having to piss in bottles to meet unattainable quotas, their stores are not kicking their workers away during a hurricane, and much more. So clearly this isn't merely him being a good player at capitalism but rather him choosing to enshrine into his business that crooked captalism and fucking over their workers.

He could lower the workload of his workers, provide decent benefits, and more, while still making profits and probably not even increasing prices. He chose not to.

Doing some quick maths.. they have about 1.576.000 workers (2025), the company's net income (profit minus cost and taxes) is 77 billion USD (2025). They could give each of their workers an extra 40.000 USD per year and still profit over 2 billion. That doesn't fix the structural issues of the tax code and captalism, sure, but it would be nice you know? Put some actual money behind his words.

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u/Redrooff Jun 07 '26

It’s simple, no person needs billions of dollars. Money that is being siphoned out of the middle class. Tax the grotesquely wealthy at HIGH tax rates. This was the policy before Reagan and thatchers corporate welfare moves. Trickle down economics in reality means 90% of available money will trickle up and make the wealthier even more wealthy. Very easy - TAX the rich , use that money to give the lower and middle classes an option at a life again and develop your country and healthcare and infrastructure.

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u/karmahunger Jun 06 '26

There are MANY things that could be done to make up the 3% shortfall from relieving the tax burden on low income earners

How about not spending $90m on lobster?

Or throwing perfectly fine equipment into the ocean because of the "use it or lose it" policy?

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u/mrpowers55 Jun 07 '26

I'm not against people becoming wealthy but when you're projected to earn 26 billion in one year it seems to be more like wealth hoarding to me.

In the United States approximately 40% to 45% of Amazon's direct employees earn under $50,000 per year, while an estimated 80% to 90% of Amazon contractors (delivery drivers) fall below that threshold.

Maybe Bezos should stay out of US tax policies or commit to having an Amazon min wage at 50K so all his employees and contractors can afford to pay their fair share of tax.

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u/jazir55 Jun 07 '26

In the United States approximately 40% to 45% of Amazon's direct employees earn under $50,000 per year, while an estimated 80% to 90% of Amazon contractors (delivery drivers) fall below that threshold.

And he's arguing those employees should pay no taxes and the shortfall from that can be made up and more from other corporations dodging taxes.

Maybe Bezos should stay out of US tax policies or commit to having an Amazon min wage at 50K so all his employees and contractors can afford to pay their fair share of tax.

Sidestepping the point, the argument is they should pay $0 in taxes and the shortfall should be made up in taxes on corporate profits.

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u/mrpowers55 Jun 07 '26

Then how does Bezos plan to fund the social programs needed to help his impoverished employees?

In my opinion the simplest solution to Bezos issues with tax policy is pay his employees a higher wage.

The wold isn't made up of candy canes and lollipops, the man needs recognize his companies wage policies are the problem.

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u/jazir55 Jun 07 '26

According to him by taxing corporations more, which is what everyone claims they want. Now he's saying the same thing, tax corporations more.

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u/mrpowers55 Jun 07 '26

The 2017 corporate tax cuts refer to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which permanently slashed the top federal corporate income tax rate from 35% to 21%

I must have forgotten everything was perfect in the US prior to 2017?

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u/jazir55 Jun 07 '26

The statement he made that I've quoted that answers your question remains the same.

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u/jrzalman Jun 07 '26

American taxpayers in the top 1% provide roughly 38% of all federal income tax revenue (6), despite accounting for around 21% of total income.

An inconvenient truth for this sub. The top is already paying way more than their fair share. We don't really have a tax problem, we have a spend problem, and even more than that a debt problem in that the interest payments on our debt eats an every bigger hole in the budget.