United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby gave an in-depth and often provocative interview to the New York Times, defending fees for aisle and window seats and opposing rising airfares by saying that “flying on airplanes is expensive.”
“There are customers who pay more and get more,” Kirby, 59, said in the Oct. 18 interview.
But he struck a decidedly more populist note on the topic of wealth inequality — which he brought up when the Times asked him about the loss of trust in CEOs and his responsibility to dispel it. Here is his full response:
“Wealth inequality has become a danger to our society, and we must address it,” he said. “We should have a national wealth tax – it won’t work on a state-by-state basis because people will just move. And I think we should have estate taxes that get closer to 100% at some level. I would pay them.”
United Airlines stock rose 0.3% before the bell on Tuesday.
Kirby is not the first or only business giant to call for higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans. Luminaries like Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and George Soros have long argued for increasing the tax burden at their rarefied levels of wealth.
Learn more: How much does a millionaire actually owe the IRS on tax day?
“We’ve already updated our tax system to keep up with the changing times, and we need to do it again, starting with raising taxes on people like me,” Gates wrote on his blog in 2020.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce (CRM), wrote in 2019 that “raising taxes on high-income people like me would help generate the billions of dollars we desperately need to improve education and health care and fight climate change.”
Joe Biden was president and congressional Democrats were preparing to pass legislation to tax the unrealized gains of people with a net worth of at least $1 billion or an annual income of $100 million for three consecutive years. Of course, that never happened, and after President Trump’s reelection, congressional Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which included provisions making lower marginal tax rates for high earners permanent, as well as other provisions benefiting wealthy Americans.
Learn more: 10 Ways the One Big Beautiful Bill Act Affects Student Loans and Financial Aid
As for estate taxes, Kirby said he favors there is no federal tax on individual beneficiaries of inherited property. A few states impose an inheritance tax.
There is a federal estate tax, but the exemption is so large – $15 million per person – that few people pay it. Only 0.2% of estates are large enough to be subject to tax, and even then the tax only applies to the amount that exceeds the exemption threshold.
Molly Moorhead is a business editor for Yahoo Finance.
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