Jeff Bezos said in a recent CNBC interview that the bottom half of U.S. earners should pay no income tax, arguing the group now pays only 3% of federal taxes and would deserve an apology, not a bill, from Washington.
“I think it should be zero,” Bezos said, adding that a nurse in Queens making $75,000 a year should not be sending more than $1,000 a month in taxes to the federal government. “We shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington,” he said. “They should be sending her an apology.”
The Amazon founder said he plans to push the idea with political leaders and cast it as a modest change in budget terms. He said exempting lower earners from federal income taxes would represent only “a small amount of money for the government” and argued, “It is part of our job as citizens and as business leaders to share our ideas.” He added, “And this one would actually help people.”
The numbers behind Bezos’s argument come from a tax system that is already highly progressive. In 2023, the bottom half of taxpayers — roughly those making under $54,000 — accounted for about 12% of total adjusted gross income and paid just 3% of all federal income taxes. The average household in that group paid about $913 in federal income tax. The bottom 40% of taxpayers already pay effectively no federal income tax on average when refundable tax credits are counted.
At the other end of the scale, the top 1% of taxpayers accounted for nearly 21% of total adjusted gross income in 2023 and paid roughly 38% of all federal income taxes. That gap is part of the reason Bezos’s comments are likely to land as both a tax proposal and a political statement.
Bezos has an estimated net worth north of $280 billion and said he personally pays “billions of dollars” in taxes. But his tax history has long drawn scrutiny. A ProPublica investigation in 2021 found that he used tax strategies that reduced his burden in certain years, including no federal income tax in 2007 and 2011. ProPublica also calculated his so-called true tax rate at 0.98% between 2014 and 2018.
The proposal now faces a familiar test: whether a billionaire’s idea about fairness can survive contact with the politics of the tax code. The U.S. system is designed to be progressive, with higher earners generally paying a larger share of income in federal taxes, and Bezos’s warm relationship with President Donald Trump adds another layer to a debate already loaded with class and political symbolism.
Bezos said he sees the backlash as a distraction. “We can argue about what the fair share is. That’s a policy debate, that’s okay,” he said. “But the vilification is the thing that’s just the distraction.”
