Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos called for zero federal income taxes on the bottom half of earners in a May 20 CNBC interview, arguing that lower-income Americans contribute so little to the overall tax base that eliminating their burden would cost the government almost nothing.
Bezos noted that the top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all federal income tax revenue, while the bottom half pay only 3%. “I don’t think it should be 3%,” he said on “Squawk Box.” “I think it should be zero.”
The bottom half of taxpayers had an adjusted gross income of nearly $54,000 in 2023, according to Tax Foundation data cited in the CNBC report. Bezos offered a concrete example to illustrate his point: a healthcare worker earning $75,000 a year in Queens. “We shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington,” he said. “They should be sending her an apology. It really makes no sense.”
Bezos characterized the income tax paid by lower earners as “a small amount of money for the government” and said he would “advocate” for such a change, though he did not outline how lawmakers might implement it. As the world’s fourth-richest person with a net worth around $269 billion, according to Forbes, Bezos positioned his proposal within a broader concern about economic inequality.
His call aligns with existing legislative efforts. Senator Corey Booker of New Jersey introduced the Keep Your Pay Act in March 2026, which proposes that the first $75,000 of income be tax-free for households filing joint returns, with proportional relief for single filers and heads of household. Booker said the measure would be “a game changer for working people,” putting more money in their pockets each month.
Current data underscores the tax burden disparity. The average income tax rate in 2023 was 14.1%, according to Tax Foundation analysis of IRS data. The top 1% of taxpayers paid an average rate of 26.3%—seven times higher than the 3.7% average rate paid by the bottom half. There were more than 76 million households in the bottom half in 2023, and they paid $913 in federal income taxes on average.
However, tax experts note that the bottom 40% of taxpayers already pay no income tax on average when refundable tax credits are counted, according to Erica York, vice president of federal tax policy for the Tax Foundation. This suggests that the practical impact of Bezos’s proposal would be narrower than the headline suggests, affecting primarily those in the 40th to 50th percentile of earners.
Bezos’s comments come amid a broader “tale of two economies,” as he framed it. Federal Reserve Bank of New York research shows that the expiration of pandemic-era subsidies for low- and middle-income households created a noticeable divergence in 2023. More recently, sharply higher gasoline prices from the Iran war have exacerbated the divide, with lower-income households spending a greater share of their incomes on fuel relative to higher earners.
Sources
- CNBC — Bezos’s May 20, 2026 interview on “Squawk Box,” tax statistics, and context on current tax burdens and the K-shaped economy
- Tax Foundation — IRS data on income distribution, tax rates by income level, and refundable tax credit impact
- U.S. Senate — Details on Senator Corey Booker’s Keep Your Pay Act proposal
- Federal Reserve Bank of New York — Research on economic divergence and pandemic-era subsidy expiration
