- President Joe Biden tweeted that taxing wealthy corporations could help bring down inflation.
- Amazon's Jeff Bezos said "mushing together" inflation and raising corporate taxes was "misdirection."
- Inflation in the US has reached its highest levels since the 1980s.
Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos went after President Joe Biden on Friday over the latter's tweet about bringing down inflation by taxing large corporations.
"You want to bring down inflation? Let's make sure the wealthiest corporations pay their fair share," Biden said in a tweet Friday evening.
The Amazon billionaire retweeted the president and suggested the tweet could be considered disinformation.
"The newly created Disinformation Board should review this tweet, or maybe they need to form a new Non Sequitur Board instead," Bezos said, apparently referring to Homeland Security's recently announced Disinformation Governance Board.
"Raising corp taxes is fine to discuss. Taming inflation is critical to discuss. Mushing them together is just misdirection," Bezos continued.
—Jeff Bezos (@JeffBezos) May 14, 2022
Inflation in the US has reached its highest levels since the 1980s, affecting the price of essential goods like gas, food, healthcare, and housing. In April the rate of inflation slowed for the first time in eight months.
As Insider previously reported, some of the most common causes of inflation are excess demand for goods and services, rising costs of wages and materials, currency devaluation, and policies and regulations.
Amazon, the company Bezos founded, has long been accused of not paying its share fair of taxes. The company paid no federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018.
Bezos, one of the world's richest people, personally paid nothing in federal income taxes in 2007 and 2011, ProPublica reported last year.
The White House did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.