Jeff Bezos says raising taxes on the wealthy won’t help the average American

CorporationsJeff Bezos says raising taxes on the wealthy won’t help the average American“What’s happening here is politicians are ... picking a villain and pointing fingers,” said the Amazon executive chair. Listen to this article with a free account00:0000:00Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc., in Miami in 2025.Eva Marie Uzcategui / Bloomberg via Getty Images fileShareAdd NBC News to GoogleMay 20, 2026, 12:54 PM EDTBy Steve KopackAmazon executive chair Jeff Bezos on Wednesday accused U.S. politicians of villainizing the ultra-wealthy and using tax policy as a political wedge issue to distract from bigger challenges facing the country.Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content.“You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens,” Bezos said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”“I think what’s going on is that it’s kind of a tale of two economies — so 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,” he said.“So what’s happening here is politicians are using the kind of age old technique...you know, picking a villain and pointing fingers, but the problem is that doesn’t solve anything,” said Bezos.“Some people talk about making the tax system more progressive,” he said. “How about we start by having the nurse in Queens not pay taxes?” It was unclear precisely which taxes Bezos was referring to. But an estimated 40% of U.S. households did not owe any individual income taxes for the 2024 tax year, according to the Tax Policy Center. This is in line with previous years and other public data. The bottom 50% of U.S. taxpayers had an average income of only $53,801 per year in 2023, according to recent Tax Foundation data.Bezos, meanwhile, is the fourth richest person in the world, with a net worth of more than $270 billion.Tax rates, he told CNBC, are “certainly a perfectly valid policy debate.”Mamdani’s...