© Ruben Sprich / Reuters
"I need to pay higher taxes. I've paid more taxes - over $10 billion - than anyone else, but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes," Microsoft founder said in an interview with CNN.
Gates, whose fortune is estimated at $86 billion, also sharply criticized the GOP tax law, which slashed tax rates for big businesses.
Gates, whose fortune is estimated at $86 billion, also sharply criticized the GOP tax law, which slashed tax rates for big businesses.
"It was not a progressive tax bill. It was a regressive tax bill. 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,"the billionaire said.
The tax reform, launched this year, has been severely criticized by analysts, who said that the measure would widen the gap between the rich and the poor. According to the latest report compiled by the Institute for Policy Studies, some 80 percent of the tax relief would benefit only the wealthiest 1 percent of US households.
"You still have about a sixth of the population living in conditions that should be very disappointing to us, and government policies need to really think, 'Why aren't we doing a better job for those people?'" Gates said, commenting on rising inequality in the US.
Reader Comments
It sure makes good PR - almost makes them sound like compassionate humanitarians -- but it never resulted in more progressive taxes that I could tell.
Anyway it appears that Gates is stepping in to fill the programming role that Buffet used to occupy - an apparent "good rich guy" trying to help out the little people. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but the position that Gates is projecting is a dead ringer for what I remember from Buffet -- it's got to be the recycling of an apparently successful strategy.