Jeff Bezos

Bankrolling the Nation

Plus: Iran, hooters, DoorDash oppression, and more...

Liz Wolfe | 5.21.2026 9:33 AM

Share on FacebookShare on XShare on RedditShare by emailPrint friendly versionCopy page URL Add Reason to Google

Media Contact & Reprint Requests

(Credit: CNBC Television / Youtube)

Who should be exempt? Why does Jeff Bezos think teachers in Queens making $75,000 a year shouldn't be expected to pay taxes?

"I think what's going on is that it's kind of a tale of two economies," he told CNBC's Squawk Box yesterday. OK, uncontroversial. "You have a bunch of people in this country who are doing really well, but you also have a bunch of people in this country who are struggling—struggling to pay rent, groceries."

"A nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year pays 12—more than $12,000 a year in taxes," continued Bezos—the veracity of which is debatable. "Does that really make sense? So, people talk about making the tax system more progressive. How about we start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes?"

The Reason Roundup Newsletter by Liz Wolfe Liz and Reason help you make sense of the day's news every morning.

Δ

Phone

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Email(Required)

SUBSCRIBE

"Why is a nurse in Queens who makes $75,000 a year paying more than $1,000 a month in taxes?" he continued. "That's $1,000 a month that could help with rent or groceries or anything. And so—and by the way, do you know what that all adds up to? The bottom half of income earners in this country pay only 3 percent of the taxes. It's only 3 percent. We can find 3 percent. So we don't have—it's a small amount of money for the government.…We don't have a revenue problem in this country. We already have the most progressive tax system in the world. The top 1 percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of all the tax revenue. The bottom half pay only 3 percent. We have already, and I think it should be zero. I don't think it should be 3 percent.…We actually have a spending problem and that's a skills issue."

I mean, some parts of this are true: The federal government does have a massive spending issue. But parts of it are very muddled: Per Tax Policy Center estimates, 40 percent of households* already don't pay any federal individual income tax. We're already basically there, at the place Jeff Bezos aspires to be! And it's not great—either for those households, seemingly, which still (reasonably!) complain of high housing and healthcare and education and........

© Reason.com