05/20/2026
Jeff Bezos went on CNBC's Squawk Box Wednesday morning and pitched an unscripted tax idea: wipe out the federal income tax for the bottom 50% of earners.
"1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all the tax revenue; the bottom half pay only 3%," he told Andrew Ross Sorkin from Blue Origin's facility in Merritt Island, Florida. "I think it should be zero. There's something very powerful about zero."
He kept circling back to one example. "Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes? That's $1,000 a month that could help with rent, groceries, or anything."
Then he went further. "We shouldn't be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington. They should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense."
Bezos framed it as a swap for universal basic income. "Instead of universal basic income, how about we stop taxing a nurse making $75,000?"
Asked about calls to tax billionaires like him at higher rates, he didn't dodge but pushed back on the math. "If people want me to pay more billions right, then let's have that debate, but don't pretend that that's going to solve the problem. You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher or nurse in Queens. I promise you."
The tax comments came inside a roughly 54-minute interview where Bezos described the country as "a tale of two economies," with asset holders pulling away from workers squeezed by inflation and rent.
