- A protest outside of Jeff Bezos' home in New York will urge him to back a wealth tax.
- The protests are happening on Tax Day and are run by a group called Patriotic Millionaires.
- In addition to the protest, the group sponsored billboards in D.C. and New York urging tax reform.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
"As a millionaire, tax me more." That's the motto of members of the Patriotic Millionaires group, which is organizing protests and mobile billboards on Tax Day encouraging higher taxes for the rich.
The three mobile billboards, which feature videos of well-known billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg, will drive through New York City and Washington, D.C. on Monday, Tax Day. In a press release, the group said that the aim of the events is " challenging the faces of wealth inequality in this country and calling for higher taxes on the rich."
The group is also organizing an in-person protest outside of Bezos' New York apartment complete with signs that say "Cut the bull—-. Tax the rich" and other slogans encouraging higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires. CNBC first reported the initiative on Monday.
The billboards will also make stops in front of homes of lawmakers like Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell.
The group accepts members with annual incomes over $1 million or assets valued at over $5 million, according to CNBC, and has over 15,000 followers on Twitter. Its website describes its focus as advocating for "a guaranteed living wage for all working citizens, and a fair tax system."
Millionaire members include Morris Pearl, who chairs the group and was a former executive at BlackRock, and documentarian Abigail Disney, according to the Tax the Rich website.
Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest person in the world, and Amazon have often been a talking point in discussions critical of the country's tax code. Amazon itself paid no federal corporate income taxes for years because the value of its tax rebates exceeded the federal corporate income tax requirements, according to reporting from Insider.
In April of this year, Bezos said Amazon is in favor of a new corporate tax structure proposed as part of Joe Biden's infrastructure plan.
Patriotic Millionaires supports Sen. Elizabeth Warren's proposal for a wealth tax, which Insider reported in April would have netted $114 billion from billionaires if it had gone into effect for the 2020 tax year.
After Joe Biden released the Made in America tax plan to increase the corporate tax rate, the chairman of Patriotic Millionaires said in a press release that "while there is still an urgent need to have wealth taxed the same as work on an individual level, the tax proposal introduced today sends a strong signal that the Administration recognizes that our current tax code is broken and riddled with loopholes."
And in April of this year, New York passed state legislation that included a wealth tax that taxes millionaires at higher rates than any other state. The tax hikes would go into effect for around 50,000 taxpayers in the state, according to the New York Times.
Amazon and the offices of Senators Schumer and McConnell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.