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Should robots pay taxes if they are taking people’s jobs?

(WISH) – Should robots pay taxes if they are taking people’s jobs? One big name in tech says yes, according to Jane King at the Nasdaq.

Robots who take people’s jobs should also pay taxes, Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates said.

“Right now, the human worker who does, say, $50,000 worth of work in a factory, that income is taxed,” Gates told Quartz and Microsoft. “If a robot comes in to do the same thing, you’d think that we’d tax the robot at a similar level.”

Gates told Quartz that governments depend on tax to run and the income needs to be replaced.

80 million U.S. jobs and 15 million U.K. jobs are at risk from automation, the Bank of England said.

Fortune reportes Gates said automation won’t be able to do well if the public opposes it.

“It is really bad if people overall have more fear about what innovation is going to do than they have enthusiasm . . . And, you know, taxation is certainly a better way to handle it than just banning some elements of it,” Gates said.

For more business headlines from Jane King at the Nasdaq, watch Daybreak Monday through Friday.

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