Andrew Yang is urging Congress to impose a tax on artificial intelligence and robots to fund tax cuts for human workers [1, 2].
This proposal seeks to address the potential for AI to displace millions of workers and widen the gap between capital owners and laborers. By shifting the tax burden, Yang said the government can create a financial cushion for those whose livelihoods are threatened by automation [2, 4].
Yang, the CEO of Noble Mobile and founder of the Forward Party, detailed his pitch during a March 2026 interview on CNBC’s "Squawk Box" [1, 2]. He said the current tax structure unfairly penalizes human labor while allowing automated systems to generate profit without contributing to the public treasury in a proportional way [2, 3].
According to Yang, AI is expected to increase economic inequality and threaten a wide array of jobs [2, 4]. He said that taxing the technology and the robots that replace humans would provide the necessary revenue to lower the tax burden on the remaining workforce [1, 3].
Yang's approach focuses on the systemic shift in how value is created in the modern economy. He said that as machines take over tasks previously performed by people, the tax system must evolve to ensure that the gains from productivity are shared more broadly across society [2, 4].
While the proposal targets the rapid growth of the tech sector, Yang framed the move as a necessary step to preserve the middle class. He said that without such intervention, the displacement caused by AI could lead to severe social and economic instability [2, 4].
“Tax the AI, tax the robots, stop taxing human workers”
Yang's proposal reflects a growing debate among policymakers regarding 'robot taxes' as a means of funding social safety nets or Universal Basic Income. If adopted, such a policy would represent a fundamental shift in fiscal strategy, moving away from taxing labor and toward taxing the automated capital that replaces it to mitigate the socio-economic shocks of the AI revolution.
