Robert Reich Says Jeff Bezos Is ‘Partly Right’ That Doubling His Taxes Won’t Help Teacher In Queens Since Some Years He Pays $0 — You Can’t Double Nothing Robert Reich speaks resisiting the dictates imposed by President Trump on higher education (Credit: Robert Reich speaks resisiting the dictates imposed by President Trump on higher education | Photo courtesy: Shutterstock) Jeannine Mancini Sun, October 11, 2026 at 8:30 AM EDT 7 min read AMZN +3.29% Trade AMZN on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
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Doubling a billionaire's tax bill sounds like a lot — unless that tax bill is already zero. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich says Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is "partly right" about his taxes, pointing out that some years Bezos paid no federal income tax.
"You could double the taxes I pay, and it's not going to help that teacher in Queens," Bezos told CNBC while discussing taxes on billionaires in May. He also argued that the bottom half of U.S. earners should pay no federal income tax.
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"Well, he's partly right," Reich wrote in a September Substack post. "Bezos has gotten away with paying no income tax in some years, so technically doubling that wouldn't help."
Reich used the point to argue for a wealth tax, saying taxing wealth itself could reach billionaires even in years when they report little or no taxable income. He highlighted Paris School of Economics professor Gabriel Zucman's work on wealth taxes and California's proposed billionaire tax.
Bezos paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2007 and again in 2011, according to a ProPublica report in 2021 based on IRS data it obtained.
In 2011, Bezos' wealth at about $18 billion and his reported investment losses exceeded his income, according to ProPublica.
That doesn't mean Bezos has never paid taxes. He paid $1.4 billion in personal federal taxes between 2006 and 2018, even as his wealth increased by $127 billion during that period, ProPublica reported.
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The distinction is central to Reich's argument. A billionaire's wealth can climb sharply without creating an equivalent amount of taxable income in a given year. That means raising an income-tax bill doesn't necessarily capture the full increase in wealth.
Whether billionaires pay more in taxes is a national policy debate, but the outcome isn't necessarily going to change an individual's retirement account or household budget overnight.
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For most households, the more immediate financial question isn't whether a billionaire's tax bill doubles. It's whether their own money is positioned for what comes next.
Reich's argument is about how the tax system measures wealth. Bezos' argument is about whether extracting more money from billionaires would actually solve problems facing ordinary Americans.
And somewhere between those two arguments sits a much more practical question for everyone else — whether the financial plan already in place is strong enough to stand on its own.
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