Bill Gates: People like me should have to pay higher taxes

Microsoft founder Bill Gates said Sunday that wealthy individuals like him should be required by the government to pay “significantly” higher taxes. 

“I need to pay higher taxes,” the billionaire said on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS. 

“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,” he continued. 

{mosads}Gates’s comments come after President Trump and congressional Republicans scored their first major legislative victory by passing a tax-cut bill last December. 

The tax plan gives some notable advantages to super-wealthy individuals, as it increases the income tax-bracket thresholds, lowers the taxation of “pass through” corporations and eliminates the alternative minimum tax. It also will eventually phase out the estate tax.

The tax plan also decreases the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. 

Republicans have touted the recent wage increases and bonuses announced by companies such as Home Depot, Starbucks and FedEx as a result of the bill.

But Gates on Sunday said those in the higher income brackets will experience the greatest benefits from the plan. 

“It was not a progressive tax bill, it was a regressive tax bill,” Gates said of the GOP tax-cut legislation.

“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,” he said. 

Gates has been critical of the Trump administration in the past and recently said the president’s “America First” message could have a long term, negative impact on the U.S. 

“There is a danger that if you think ‘America First’ too much [more] than the long-term benefit of African stability and goodwill in Africa, in absolute or even relative to competitors like China, you tend to devalue that,” Gates said at the time.