>as we’ve previously reported, Bezos had so little income in a couple of recent years that he was able to pay $0 in federal income taxes in those periods.

This is the part people are bothered by.

Regardless of why, billionaires should never be paying $0 in federal income taxes. Our tax code and the people finding loopholes in it should not do this.

Executives should not be able to be "unpaid" for years because they're getting tax advantaged stock deals.

Nobody should be able to have that much wealth and have a year with no taxes.

If you are the human at the end of the line of ownership that ultimately benefits from assets, you should be charged ordinary income as you extract from those assets.

The only people who should owe $0 in federal taxes are those earning less than a full time minimum wage salary during that tax year, with no exceptions for folks who magically seem to find millions of dollars to spend during a year that they "earned" $0.

> paying $0 in federal income taxes

> a year with no taxes

These are two very different things, and the former does not imply the latter.

I always like how good old Warren Buffett is calling for high earners to be taxed more, yet he never seems to show up on any of these high earner lists...

He doesn't tend to show up in the lists because he pays himself relatively little (compared to other billionaires). Between 2014-18 he had income of $125m, and paid tax of $23.7m[1]. That's still lower than the average American absolute tax rate, but way higher than most other billionaires. So he's a bit less of a sensational headline than his contemporaries.

His wealth growth of $24.3bn is untaxed through those years, he presumably left those assets in Berkshire Hathaway where he'd personally not generate a tax bill for them. Eventually Buffet, or more likely his inheritors, will sell the Berkshire Hathaway assets, and should pay a monumental tax bill on them.

[1] https://www.propublica.org/article/the-secret-irs-files-trov...

Why would they ever sell anything when they can just use them as collateral for loans and avoid ever paying taxes.

How is that inconsistent?

Because the narrative being developed around him is that he is such a selfless guy, humble midwestern values, wants good for America, yet he structures his affairs in a way that he pays as little tax as possible and would be largely unaffected by increased income tax...

From my understanding, his income would be from capital gains, and he does advocate for increasing capital gains tax rates.