Microsoft founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates said Sunday that the government should compel wealthy people like him to pay “significantly higher taxes” than the rest of Americans.
“I need to pay higher taxes,” Mr. Gates, the second richest man in the world after Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, said in an interview on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”
“I’ve paid, in absolute, more taxes — over $10 billion — than anyone else, but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes,” he added.
Mr. Gates also criticized the Republican tax plan, which lowered the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent as of Jan. 1, as benefitting the super-rich rather than working-class Americans.
“It was not a progressive tax bill. It was a regressive tax bill,” he argued. “People who are wealthier tended to get dramatically more benefits than the middle class or those who are poor, and so it runs counter to the general trend you’d like to see, where the safety net is getting stronger and those at the top are paying higher taxes.”
• Jessica Chasmar can be reached at jchasmar@washingtontimes.com.
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