04/25/2026
Sen. Bernie Sanders has introduced a bill that could require Elon Musk to pay roughly $42 billion in taxes while providing a U.S. family of four with a $12,000 payment.
Sen. Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna introduced the Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act, which would impose a 5% annual wealth tax on holdings above $1 billion. The measure would affect the 938 billionaires living in the United States, who collectively possess about $8.2 trillion in assets, and is estimated to raise approximately $4.4 trillion over the next ten years.
In its first year, the plan would deliver $3,000 checks to individuals in households earning less than $150,000, so a family of four could receive $12,000 in direct aid. The remainder of the revenue would be used to expand Medicare to cover dental, vision, and hearing care, raise the minimum public school teacher salary to $60,000, cap childcare costs at 7% of family income, and help finance the construction of more than 7 million affordable homes.
Current estimates suggest Elon Musk would owe about $42 billion, while Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg might each face bills near $11 billion. Sanders criticized the existing tax system as inequitable, noting that billionaires often pay a lower effective tax rate than typical workers and pointing to a half-century trend in which $79 trillion shifted from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.
Critics, however, dispute the revenue forecasts. Analysts at the American Enterprise Institute warn that the $4.4 trillion figure could be substantially overstated because of potential tax avoidance and altered investment behavior. The Tax Foundation also called the estimate unrealistic, saying it fails to consider likely economic impacts. With Republican opposition, the bill currently faces long odds in Congress.