2026-10-06 · contested story
Should AI pay taxes? The debate is gaining traction in the US - EL PAÍS English
The debate over whether AI and robots should be taxed has moved from a fringe thought experiment to a live policy question in the US. The trigger across these sources is a cluster of 2026 developments: Bill Gates reviving his 2017 'robot tax' idea in a New York Times podcast with Ezra Klein, arguing companies that replace human workers with AI should pay the same FICA payroll taxes a human would (Business Insider, Yahoo/First for Money, WION); Senate Democrats releasing a report titled 'The Big Tech Oligarchs' War Against Workers' warning AI could destroy nearly 100 million US jobs and proposing a robot tax (Reason, Fox Business); Senator Wyden proposing an excise tax on data centers (Brookings); and figures like Andrew Yang, Dario Amodei, and OpenAI floating automation-linked taxes (CNBC, Business Insider). The core worry animating proponents is fiscal: Forbes notes that 'between 65% and 83% of federal tax revenue is collected on wages and salaries,' so machine-driven displacement threatens the tax base itself.
How each side frames it
left
"artificial intelligence and automation will wipe out millions of jobs — up to 50 percent in the coming decades, according to some studies"
"Lawmakers would be wise to note, too, that robot employees don't pay taxes, nor do they purchase consumer products. Unless government leaders take decisive action soon, we won't be arguing over how to slice the existing economic pie but about what to do with the crumbs."
"Altman has been publicly worrying that basic income will become necessary as AI eliminates traditional jobs while creating huge stockpiles of wealth held by a few"
"he's motivated by surging interest in Silicon Valley in using income redistribution as compensation for the costs imposed on workers by increasing automation"
"if you make too early of a call and you try to replace all your workers with A.I., and then it doesn't work out, you hire back the workers. But there are lots of other things that this hype around A.I. is driving forward that is not reversible"
center
"Pro: Why not? We tax human labor. Con: It will slow innovation."
"the debate has jumped to "which tax?" before answering two fundamental questions: What are lawmakers trying to accomplish? And what can a tax actually do about it?"
"if machines broadly replace workers, as Musk and many others believe, this transformation poses an existential threat to the US tax system, which is largely built on taxing labor income"
"Take these estimates with a grain of salt since some employers may be blaming AI for layoffs that are caused by, say, declining sales."
"I don't think it's time to put any"
right
"There's a reason you've never heard of a Model T tax. No one proposed a levy on the cotton gin or a fine for using computers. America's prosperity came from embracing innovation, not taxing it. Now some politicians want to reverse that formula by putting a price on progress itself."
"Overseas competitors won't slow their adoption of AI. They'll use it to boost efficiency, improve quality, and lower prices—and consumers will notice. Firms facing a robot tax, meanwhile, will struggle to keep up."
"A robot tax is a policy of retreat dressed up as protection. It is a shortsighted attempt to freeze a moment in time rather than help Americans adapt to change"
"Senate Democrats have published a new report called "The Big Tech Oligarchs' War Against Workers: AI and Automation Could Destroy Nearly 100 Million U.S Jobs in a Decade.""
"Nearly 100 million US jobs could be displaced by AI within decade"
What each side left out
The left left out — covered by the Reason & MIT Technology Review & Forbes
- the innovation/competitiveness downside — that a tax could put the US behind foreign AI adopters
- the point that labor was more highly taxed than capital and a tax could be distortionary
The left left out — covered by the Brookings
- the fiscal-trajectory argument that even strong AI growth leaves federal debt rising, so a specific AI tax does little
The right left out — covered by the Business Insider & Forbes & The Boston Globe
- the specific mechanism Gates proposes (FICA parity between human and robot labor)
- the fact that robot employees 'don't pay taxes, nor do they purchase consumer products' eroding the revenue base
The right left out — covered by the MIT Technology Review
- the nuanced point that we may already subsidize robots over people via capital depreciation tax incentives
The center left out — covered by the Reason
- an explicit libertarian framing of the tax as 'a price on progress' / policy of retreat
What's actually true?
[verified] Bill Gates proposes companies that replace human workers with AI/robots should pay the same FICA payroll tax a human worker would.
[verified] Gates first proposed a robot tax in 2017 and still supports it.
[unverified] Between 65% and 83% of US federal tax revenue is collected on wages and salaries, making labor-replacing AI a threat to the tax base.
[verified] Senate Democrats published a report projecting AI and automation could destroy nearly 100 million US jobs in a decade and proposing a robot tax.
[verified] A 2013 Oxford study by Frey and Osborne predicted almost 50% of total US employment is at 'high risk' of being lost to computerization/automation within two decades.
[unverified] Even in the most optimistic AI-growth scenario, US federal debt would still rise sharply (to about 126% of GDP by 2056), so AI growth slows but does not reverse the fiscal climb.
[unverified] The Iceberg Index study estimates AI already replaces about 2% of wages (~$211 billion) in computing/tech, with 11.7% of labor income (~$1.2 trillion) at risk in administrative, financial, and professional services.
[verified] The EU Parliament in May 2016 floated classifying robots as 'electronic persons' whose owners would pay tax, but rejected the plan in February 2017.
The narrative clash
Whether a robot tax would help or hurt workers in the long run
Left: a well-designed robot tax could in theory be used to retrain people in different jobs and to provide a universal basic income
Right: Workers supposedly protected by a robot tax would actually fall behind. When looking for a new job, they will have glaring gaps in their resumes—no experience using AI tools
Whether singling out robots/AI for taxation is sound policy
Left: If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you'd think we'd tax the robot at a similar level
Right: Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers accused him in a Washington Post column of 'rejecting technological progress' and 'singling out robots as job destroyers.'
Whether AI poses a genuine imminent jobs apocalypse
Left: What is the evidence that we are on the verge of a robotic apocalypse? ... we are more likely to face the Japan scenario of persistent labor shortages
Right: a dire forecast of significant job displacement due to artificial intelligence (AI)
32 sources analyzed
MIT Technology Review Brookings Institution The Boston Globe The Wall Street Journal Deutsche Welle Reason CNBC Forbes The Damage Report The Washington Post Vox The Washington Post BBC News Business Insider USA Today Yahoo! Search USA Today Fox Business CBS News Vox The Boston Globe MSNBC The Boston Globe The Boston Globe Vox News 4 Jax NPR MSNBC The Washington Post The Washington Post USA Today USA Today