A protest was organised in front of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' houses in New York and Washington by a group of wealthy millionaires demanding the rich be held more accountable for their taxable contribution to the nation.
The protest was organised by the 'Patriotic Millionaires' on the occasion of 'Tax Day' which is America's day to submit income tax returns to the federal government. The members of the groups have assets valued between 5-10 million dollars and carried signs such as: "Cut The Bullshit. Tax The Rich."
"It makes much more sense to require the people who have benefited the most from our system to reinvest a huge percentage of their excess wealth back into that system," Erica Payne, president of Patriotic Millionaires, said in a statement.
"We're ending up with a few rich people and a lot of poor people and that doesn't work," Morris Pearl, chairman of the Patriotic Millionaires board and a former BlackRock executive, told the Guardian. "That's not a way you can run a sustainable society."
Earlier, President Joe Biden had said that he would repeal Donald Trump's tax cuts and that taxes on corporations and those who made over $400,000 a year would be raised. However, even under existing tax laws, Amazon was recently revealed to have only paid a 9.4% federal income tax rate instead of the stipulated 21%, according to calculations by the progressive Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.
Protests were also scheduled to take place in front of the Washington home of the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, the New York office of the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, and others.