Jeff Bezos says bottom half of U.S. earners should pay no federal income tax

jfengel•about 3 hours ago

That's not really helping much. Yes, $0 is better than $1, but it's not really saving a ton of money.

Eliminating the need to file would be nice. That would save a lot of time.

And note that even the poorest filers still pay considerable payroll taxes, over 15%. That's actually a tax that Bezos barely pays -- it's capped at $184,000, and Bezos doesn't pay that much because his "salary" is $80,000. All of his vast earnings from capital gains pay $0 in payroll taxes.

This sounds to me like an effort to distract attention from the fact that we have a vast deficit, and we cannot close it by getting money from the bottom 50%. You're only going to reduce it meaningfully by cutting big programs (not the penny-ante ones that DOGE cut for ideological reasons, not fiscal ones) and taxing people and corporations that actually have money (people like Bezos).

matchbok3•about 3 hours ago

Even taxing the rich won't solve the deficit, at all. However, taxing the middle class to fund all the various social programs people want is political suicide. So we are stuck here.

bigbadfeline•10 minutes ago

> Even taxing the rich won't solve the deficit, at all.

The economy isn't influenced only by taxation, there are many other important factors which are never considered by the mainstream economists, corporate and government public figures.

Fiscal policies are very important but only in the overall policy mix. Asking "Who do we tax to fix the deficit?" is the wrong question, neither the deficit nor the many other problems can be fixed by taxation alone.

seanmcdirmid•about 3 hours ago

We really should move payroll taxes into (progressive rate) income taxes to make America more equitable. The trick is still making Medicare and social security a defined benefit that you pay into via income taxes. The next step is then funding medical insurance via income taxes as well.

ferguess_k•about 3 hours ago

I actually agree with him, but maybe they will lower the salary further because of that, to make US workers more "competitive".

smallerize•about 3 hours ago

The article has some good numbers, but it doesn't mention that about 30% of workers already pay zero federal income tax. So it's really the 30-50 percentiles paying that 3% of tax. That means the change would be larger for them than you might expect, but it would change nothing for the lower earners.

MBCook•about 3 hours ago

Why do I have a feeling that includes him through some kind of tax doge shenanigans.

someperson•about 3 hours ago

Effectively formalizing the system we have now. As the article notes bottom 50% of come earners pay ~3% of tax at 54k income, and it's less than Sen Bookers <75k zero income tax proposal.

Jeff Bezos says bottom half of U.S. earners should pay no federal income tax

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