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wealth tax
‘Poor Jeff’: Sanders Ridicules Bezos-Owned Washington Post for Attacking Billionaire Tax Plan
"Surprise! The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post is against my 5% billionaire wealth tax," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. "I wonder why?"
Mar 03, 2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders mocked Jeff Bezos on Tuesday after the editorial board of the newspaper owned by the Amazon founder denounced his plan to tax billionaires' wealth.
In an opinion piece published Monday, the Washington Post editorial board accused Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who co-sponsored Sanders' wealth tax plan, of threatening to "strangle America’s golden goose" by hitting billionaires with an annual 5% wealth tax.
"Sanders wants to confiscate 5% of all assets every year from America’s billionaires, with the goal of stealing half their fortunes," the editorial complained. "He estimates, unrealistically, that this could raise $4.4 trillion over 10 years to fund a wish list of progressive fantasies, including something akin to a universal basic income and more government-managed healthcare."
The editorial then argued this was bad because "even for billionaires, a 5% tax on every asset they own would virtually wipe out any gains they make in a normal year," and would force them to sell off some illiquid assets such as "collections of wines, art, jewelry, and yachts" just to make their annual payments to the government.
The editorial concluded by claiming "Sanders and Khanna take as a given the capacity of American capitalism to deliver continuing prosperity, no matter how many anchors they weigh it down with," then warned that "economic history proves that future growth is never guaranteed."
In a social media post, Sanders mocked the Post editors for publishing an opinion piece defending the economic interests of their owner, whose current net worth is estimated by Forbes to be well north of $200 billion.
"Surprise! The Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post is against my 5% billionaire wealth tax," Sanders wrote. "I wonder why? If enacted, Bezos would owe $12 billion in taxes, and an average family of four would receive a $12,000 direct payment. Poor Jeff would be left with just $224 billion to survive."
In a news article about the tax plan published by the Post Monday, Khanna was quoted as saying it was needed to address the historic disparities in wealth that have only grown over the last 50 years.
"This is Sen. Sanders' defining vision for our age," Khanna explained. "It is the most ambitious and transformative legislation for our times to tackle inequality in the New Gilded Age."
Wealth inequality has become so acute that the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal in February published a news analysis declaring that billionaires' tax avoidance schemes were "becoming a problem for the economy."
The Journal last month also published an analysis of US wealth inequality by chief economics commentator Greg Ip showing that corporate profits’ share of gross domestic income is now the highest it has been in more than 40 years, while the share of income paid out in workers’ wages is at the lowest.
“Profits have soared since the pandemic, and the market value attached to those profits even more,” wrote Ip. “The result: Capital, which includes businesses, shareholders, and superstar employees, is triumphant, while the average worker ekes out marginal gains.”
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'This Is Not a Drill': Ad Promoting California Billionaire Tax Airs During Olympics
"Massive federal funding cuts will shut hospitals and emergency rooms forever because billionaires refuse to pay their fair share."
Feb 23, 2026
Organizers behind a proposed billionaire wealth tax in California aired their first campaign advertisement on the final day of the 2026 Winter Olympics over the weekend, styling the 30-second spot as an emergency alert warning of a looming healthcare catastrophe in the Golden State.
"This is not a drill," the ad says. "California healthcare is facing an emergency. Hospitals will close. Expect longer wait times and overcrowded emergency rooms. Massive federal funding cuts will shut hospitals and emergency rooms forever because billionaires refuse to pay their fair share. Prepare to make alternative plans for care, or vote yes to make billionaires pay their fair share."
Watch the ad:
The advertisement aired days after US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) headlined an event formally launching the push to get the proposed billionaire wealth tax on the California ballot in November amid intense opposition from the state's Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and some of its wealthiest residents.
If enacted, billionaires residing in California as of the start of 2026 would face a one-time 5% tax on their fortunes, and the revenue—around $100 billion, according to supporters—would go toward counteracting the impacts of federal cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance approved last summer by congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump. Proponents of the billionaire tax note that more than 3 million Californians could lose healthcare coverage if the state doesn't act.
Suzanne Jimenez, chief of staff at Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West, which is leading the campaign for the wealth tax, said the new ad "underscores the choice California faces—more tax breaks for billionaires, or keeping our hospitals open."
"It’s important to alert as many Californians as possible to the healthcare collapse that is looming, because it’s preventable if billionaires pay something closer to their fair share,” Jimenez added.
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Republican Unveils Bill to Let Billionaires Escape Proposed Wealth Tax in California
California's roughly 200 billionaires have more than $2 trillion collectively. Rep. Kevin Kiley said it's "unfair" to tax 5% of it to fund healthcare coverage for 3.4 million people at risk of losing it.
Feb 19, 2026
As Sen. Bernie Sanders barnstorms California to champion a proposed wealth tax on billionaires, a Republican congressman has joined the tech and crypto tycoons trying to stop the proposition in its tracks.
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) United Healthcare Workers West, the union that launched the effort, is currently working to gather nearly 900,000 signatures by April get the proposal on the ballot.
If they're successful, Californians will have the chance to vote this November for a one-time 5% tax on people in the state with more than $1 billion, which is projected to raise about $100 billion over the next few years to support healthcare spending gutted by President Donald Trump.
Proponents of state or local tax increases on the rich have often had to face fears that their proposals will backfire, leading CEOs to flee the state to protect their riches.
Indeed, several of the state's billionaires have signaled that they may leave the state or pull assets if they are required to pay the tax—including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel.
California's proposal, however, avoids this problem by requiring any billionaire who resided in the state as of January 1, 2026, to pay the one-time tax, even if they move.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.) on Wednesday announced plans to introduce legislation that would protect these billionaires from any plans to "confiscate" their wealth if they decide to flee.
The bill prohibits California and any other state that may try something similar from imposing a retroactive tax on individuals who no longer reside there.
“California’s proposed wealth tax is an unprecedented attempt to chase down people who have already left as a result of the state’s poor policies,” Kiley said. “As a result, many of our state’s leading job creators are leaving preemptively. No state should be allowed to reach back in time and impose a new tax on someone who no longer lives there. That is fundamentally unfair.”
Proponents of the tax argue that the unequal distribution of wealth it's meant to address is quite a bit more "unfair" than a tax hike on the state's richest would be—especially after Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year handed a historically large tax break to the wealthiest 1% of Americans, while social services for the poor were cut across the board.
"Last year alone, after receiving the largest tax break in history, the 938 billionaires in America became $1.5 trillion richer," Sanders shouted to a booing crowd at a rally in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
He emphasized that the roughly 200 billionaires in California are collectively worth more than $2 trillion and that paying just a single 5% tax on their wealth would protect healthcare for more than 3.4 million people facing coverage losses due to federal Medicaid cuts.
Billionaires in the state have marshaled huge war chests and hired seasoned campaign veterans to promote rival ballot measures aimed at undercutting the wealth tax.
One committee, backed by Brin, has already raised $35 million from industry barons around the state, according to Politico. Crypto mogul Chris Larsen has dumped $2 million into Brin's committee and spent $5 million more to create his own.
Another committee is staffed by consultants associated with Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom—a likely 2028 presidential frontrunner who has also come out against the tax, warning that it would cause too great a drain on California's state treasury.
In remarks on the House floor introducing his bill, Kiley claimed that "$1 trillion has exited California simply in anticipation of this policy," though in reality, many billionaires have merely claimed they were preparing to leave without actually having done so yet.
Christopher Marquis and Nick Romeo explained in TIME on Wednesday that while this "tax-and-flee story" often spreads whenever a tax hike is proposed, it is "based on biased or sloppy arguments where anecdote replaces systematic evidence, correlation poses as causation, and every modest redistributive proposal is framed as an existential threat to prosperity."
They wrote that:
Discussion should not focus on whether one billionaire makes a threat, but on what the data show across years, across the tax base, and after real policy changes. According to the data analysis firm Altrata, there were over 33,000 New Yorkers worth $30 million or more as of 2025. Quoting some famous ones on either side of the issue makes for a good headline—but bad reasoning.
We should look instead to systematic studies, like this one by the Fiscal Policy Institute, which found no significant out-migration by residents of New York State in response to tax increases in either 2017 or 2021; the latter increase is estimated to raise approximately $3.6 billion annually.
Sanders said billionaires "lie a lot," noting that some wealthy New Yorkers pledged to flee the city if Zohran Mamdani—who also pledged to hike taxes on the rich—was elected mayor, threats that have largely not materialized.
"I'm sure these guys don't want to pay a few billion dollars more in taxes. But for them, in many ways, that is pocket change," Sanders said. "What they are saying is 'If you stand up to us... If you think it's more important that children get healthcare than that we get massive tax breaks, we are going to punish you... We're going to move. We're going to shut down businesses here.'"
He added: "All that the folks in California are saying is that at a time when the very rich are becoming phenomenally richer, when the very rich have been given a massive tax break by Donald Trump, when millions of people in this state are struggling to be able to afford healthcare, maybe billionaires should start paying their fair share of taxes."
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