'Bond Villain' Jeff Bezos Claims 'You Could Double the Taxes I Pay' and It Won't Help Anyone

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos drew ridicule on Wednesday after he claimed that doubling the amount of taxes he pays wouldn't be beneficial to society.

During an interview on CNBC, journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Bezos about arguments made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) that the super-rich have lower effective tax rates than average Americans given how much of their wealth comes from unrealized capital gains and not traditional income earned through actual labor.

"I pay billions of dollars in taxes," replied Bezos, whom Forbes estimates is worth $267 billion. "If people want me to pay billions more, then let's have that debate. But don't pretend, you know, that that's going to solve the problem. You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not gonna help that teacher in Queens, I promise you."

A 2021 investigation by Pro Publica found that Bezos' effective tax rate of less than 1% between 2014 and 2018, as he paid a total of $973 million in taxes over a period in which his net worth grew by $99 billion.

As explained by the Institute of Taxation and Policy (ITEP), this effective tax rate was "significantly lower" than the tax rate paid by middle-class Americans over that period.

"There were multiple years where Bezos paid nothing at all in income taxes," ITEP noted. "While having billions of dollars of wealth, Bezos consistently avoided income tax by offsetting earned income with other investment losses and various deductions, all while Amazon stock was rapidly rising."

Democratic congressional candidate Melat Kiros in Colorado suggested Bezos had a point about taxation—"because we tax income, not wealth.

"Bezos takes out a tiny salary, pays the income tax, and lives off loans borrowed against his stocks, basically tax-free," said Kiros. "They all do this and now 935 billionaires hold more wealth than 170 million Americans. It’s time to tax wealth."

Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, took issue with Bezos' claim that doubling his taxes would produce no benefits.

"Jeff Bezos paid $500 million for his super-yacht and $75 million for his super-yacht’s mini-yacht—both of which he’s allowed to write off on his taxes," she wrote in a social media post. "That alone would cover $180 in classroom supplies for every public school teacher in the US."

Craig Harrington, research director at Media Matters for America, marveled at how out of touch Bezos seemed to be.

"There’s a funny thing about being uber wealthy," he observed. "They get so rich that they lose all sense of place, they essentially manifest as stateless people with no connection to or understanding of the world outside their private airports and resplendent villas."

Journalist and screenwriter David Simon expressed a similar view of the impact of immense wealth on Bezos' psyche.

"Too much money contorts any human being," Simon wrote. "And what was once a man is now, for the rest of the world, a fully metastasized cancer."

Author Hemant Mehta, meanwhile, simply wondered if Bezos "auditioning to be the next Bond villain."