Mayor Zohran Mamdani (L) and Jeff Bezos<\/p>\n
Getty Images (L) | CNBC (R)<\/p>\n
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a> fired back on Wednesday at Jeff Bezos<\/a>\u00a0after the Amazon<\/a> founder and\u00a0executive chairman\u00a0questioned whether raising taxes<\/a> on billionaires would do anything to help working-class New Yorkers.<\/p>\n “You could double the taxes I pay, and it’s not gonna help that teacher in Queens. I promise you,” Bezos said in an interview on CNBC<\/a> earlier Wednesday.<\/p>\n Mamdani responded on X<\/a>: “I know a few teachers in Queens who would beg to differ.”<\/p>\n Bezos, meanwhile, pushed for tax cuts for low-income Americans<\/a>.<\/p>\n He called for eliminating federal income taxes<\/a>\u00a0on the bottom half of earners, telling CNBC’s Andrew Sorkin on “Squawk Box<\/a>,” that the top 1% of taxpayers pay about 40% of all tax revenue, while the bottom half pay 3%.<\/p>\n “I don’t think it should be 3%,” Bezos said. “I think it should be zero.”<\/p>\n In 2023, the bottom half of taxpayers had an adjusted gross income of\u00a0nearly $54,000<\/a>\u00a0in 2023, according to the Tax Foundation, which is funded by conservative interests, citing the most recent IRS statistics. Households earning in the top 1% brought home at least $676,000 of income that year.<\/p>\n As of September 2025, starting salaries for New York City teachers<\/a> were $68,902 for those with a bachelor’s degree and no prior teaching experience, and $77,455 for those with a master’s degree, according to NYC Public Schools<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Those salaries are set to rise in September 2026 to $71,314 and $80,166 respectively.<\/p>\n The feud between Bezos and Mamdani puts a sharper edge on the mayor’s tax-the-rich<\/a> message, which has been central to his push to fund city services and address New York’s affordability crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, are backing a proposed pied-\u00e0-terre tax<\/a> on luxury second homes worth $5 million or more, after the mayor dropped a broader proposal to raise property taxes<\/a> on many homeowners.<\/p>\n Mamdani has said the city’s first-ever pied-\u00e0-terre tax would generate $500 million <\/a>annually, but New York City’s comptroller has warned the revenue could come in lower, around $340 million to $380 million <\/a>annually, once property owners change their behavior.<\/p>\n “I think that the pied-\u00e0-terre tax is a fine thing for New York to do,” Bezos said in the interview.<\/p>\n