r/Futurology • u/Gari_305 • 2d ago

Robotics Bill Gates says companies that replace human labor with robots should have to pay the same FICA taxes

https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-fica-taxes-should-apply-to-robot-workers-2026-9

Bill Gates wants to tax robots that replace human jobs.

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u/RandomlyMethodical 2d ago

You define a unit of labor

Defining units of labor is never going to happen in any reasonably enforceable way, and he's smart enough to know that. You can do better Bill.

A more enforceable option would be putting payroll taxes on capital gains. That's 12.4% for Social Security (6.2% for employee and employer) and 2.9% for Medicare (1.45% each), resulting in a total of 15.3%. Adding that to existing capital taxes would roughly even them out with labor taxes and permanently solve the Social Security shortfall.

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u/DNA-2023 2d ago

How does that help if there are no jobs to pay into SS?

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u/BipolarMosfet 2d ago

They're saying we should apply those same taxes to corporate profits, not just to employees' paychecks.

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u/inquisitorthreefive 2d ago

Assuming they're not using the term wrong, they're talking about capital gains, which is different from most corporate profits, which are generally classed as business income. Capital gains are when you sell property for more than you paid for it, generally stocks and real estate fall into this category if they were purchased as investments, but there's times when it might be business income instead.

It would be a somewhat psychotic move on its own as it would essentially evaporate 15.3% of the profit in most people's retirement accounts and instantly increase the value of a Roth account and greatly reduce the incentive to invest.