Mayor Zoran Mamdani (left) and Jeff Bezos
Getty Images (left) | CNBC(R)
New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani fired back at Jeff Bezos on Wednesday. Amazon The founder and executive chairman questioned whether raising taxes on billionaires would do anything to help working-class New Yorkers.
“I can double the taxes I pay, but it’s not going to help that teacher in Queens. I promise you that,” Bezos said in a CNBC interview early Wednesday.
Mamdani responded in X, “I know some teachers at Queen’s who beg for things to be different.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Bezos promoted tax cuts for low-income Americans.
He called for eliminating the federal income tax on the bottom half of income earners, saying on CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin’s “Squawk Box” that the top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all tax revenue, while the bottom half pays 3%.
“I don’t think it should be 3%,” Bezos said. “I think it should be zero.”
The bottom half of taxpayers had an adjusted gross income of nearly $54,000 in 2023, the Tax Foundation, which receives funding from conservative interest groups, said, citing the latest IRS statistics. Households in the top 1% of earners took home at least $676,000 in income that year.
As of September 2025, the starting salary for teachers in New York City was $68,902 for teachers with a bachelor’s degree and no teaching experience, and $77,455 for those with a master’s degree, according to New York City Public Schools.
These salaries are scheduled to increase to $71,314 and $80,166, respectively, in September 2026.
The feud between Bezos and Mamdani goes beyond the mayor’s message of taxing the wealthy, which has been central to his push to fund city services and address New York’s affordability crisis.
The city of Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) are backing a proposed pied-a-terre tax on luxury second homes worth more than $5 million, after the mayor withdrew a broader proposal to raise property taxes for many homeowners.
Mamdani said the city’s first pied-à-terre tax is expected to generate $500 million a year in revenue, but the New York City Comptroller has warned that revenue could drop by as much as $340 million to $380 million a year if property owners change their behavior.
“I think the pied-à-terre tax is good for New York City,” Bezos said in an interview.
