Tax Trend. Robot Replaced a Human Employee? Tax the Robot

Bill Gates suggested to Quartz that if US workers are being displaced by robots, tax the robots.

Who jumped on this idea? Jane Kim, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Kim did 3 things:

• Launched a campaign called the Jobs of the Future Fund
• Asked the California’s legislature to study a statewide tax on companies that displace workers with automation
• Decided that a portion of the tax would “be used for education, retraining and targeted investments in new industries” and “help smooth the transition for our workers, providing them with better opportunities

Quartz | California’s legislature is being asked to consider taxing robots