Berkeley public policy professor Robert Reich, who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, responded to Jeff Bezos‘s interview Wednesday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, where the billionaire called for zero federal income taxes on the bottom half of earners.
Bezos said the top 1% of taxpayers pay the lion’s share of all the tax revenue, and the bottom half pay 3%. “I don’t think it should be 3%,” the Amazon founder said, “I think it should be zero.”
Jeff Bezos says taxes for lower salary workers are too high: “It’s kind of absurd that we’re doing this … We shouldn’t be asking this nurse in Queens to send money to Washington.” pic.twitter.com/O77tbrkFwf
— CNBC (@CNBC) May 20, 2026
Reich wrote on social media: “Effective tax rate paid by Jeff Bezos from 2014 to 2018: 0.98%. Effective 2025 federal tax rate paid by Amazon: 1.4%. Typical tax rate paid by the average American: 14.5% Just thought I should point that out.”
Bezos responded to Reich’s post by amplifying a post written by MAGA-aligned Alexander Muse, a.k.a. “Amuse” on X, who called Reich a liar. Amuse wrote: “Three numbers, presented in parallel, presented as comparable, presented as damning. And every one of them is wrong in a different way.”
Please do a quick read of this. It’s short, well written, and will remove a bit of wool from over your eyes. https://t.co/n4nEkF58MD
— Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 21, 2026
[NOTE: Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman also disputed Bezos’s claim about the tax burden borne by the top 1%, saying his “numbers aren’t remotely right unless Bezos is referring solely to federal income taxes — which are only part of the overall tax system. About 80 percent of Americans pay more in payroll taxes — FICA on your paycheck — than in income taxes. Furthermore, state and local taxes generally fall more heavily on the working and middle classes than on the elite.”]
A.J. Delgado, former senior advisor to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and transition team member, replied to Bezos and Amuse: “Yes, ‘billionaire has a lower tax rate than the secretary’ has spread like fire. America tax INCOME – not increase in wealth. If one’s house goes up in value, one doesn’t pay tax on that. Billionaires’ on-paper wealth is the same. It is not INCOME, much less realized income.”
In 2012, billionaire investor Warren Buffett made headlines asserting that the tax system was unfair, using the example that his secretary worked “just as hard as I do and she pays twice the rate I pay. I think that’s outrageous.”
The disparity is largely due to the different ways various forms of income are classified, with capital gains generally being taxed at a lower rate than wages, which are subject to payroll taxes. Speaking with ABC News, Buffett said at the time: “People lobby to keep their estate taxes down. They lobby to keep their capital gains taxes down…people who are very well-to-do, who are trying to shift the burden onto people like [his secretary] and away from themselves.”
Writing in his newsletter the day after Bezos responded, Reich again targeted the “Big Tech oligarchs — centi-billionaires Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Ellison, and other robber barons.”
Reich wrote that these men “paid for Trump’s 2024 election, his inauguration, and his ballroom and are major donors to Senate and House Republicans. They’ve shown up at Trump’s inauguration, White House dinners, and official visits to China. In return, these oligarchs have been allowed to monopolize and drive up the prices we pay and silence Trump critics.”