Bezos Says the Bottom Half of Americans Should Pay no Federal Income Tax

CNBC, Business Insider, and Forbes contributed to this report.

Jeff Bezos wants the bottom half of US earners to stop paying federal income tax altogether.

Speaking to CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Wednesday, the Amazon executive chairman said lower earners are paying only a small slice of total tax revenue anyway, and that slice ought to be wiped out.

“The bottom half pay 3%,” Bezos said. “I think it should be zero.”

He made the case using a pretty specific example: a nurse in Queens making $75,000 a year. In his view, that worker should not be sending money to Washington at all. Same goes, he said, for lower-paid Amazon workers earning around $50,000.

“Why are you taxing them so much?” he said. “It really makes no sense.”

The comment lands in the middle of a bigger fight over taxes, inequality and the rising cost of living. Several Democratic-led states are weighing higher taxes on the wealthy, while some federal lawmakers are floating the opposite idea: giving lower earners tax relief. Sen. Cory Booker, for one, has proposed making the first $75,000 of income tax-free for many families.

Bezos framed the issue as a split-screen economy. Some Americans are doing very well, he said. Others are still getting squeezed.

That divide is not exactly subtle. The top 1% of taxpayers earned at least $676,000 in 2023 and paid about 40% of federal income tax revenue, while the bottom half earned far less and paid just 3%, according to Tax Foundation data based on IRS figures. But the Tax Foundation also notes that once refundable credits are included, the lowest earners already owe little or no income tax on average.

Bezos, whose fortune is around $269 billion, said he would back a move to zero out income taxes for the bottom half of earners. He did not spell out how Congress would actually pull that off.

The larger debate is familiar: should the tax code ask more from the rich, or give lower-income households more breathing room? Bezos clearly thinks the answer starts with letting the nurse in Queens keep her paycheck.