Bill Gates opens up about his view on taxes – and it might surprise you

Bill Gates outlined his views on taxes during his 11th Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit – and some comments may come as a surprise.

In his session earlier this week, the Microsoft co-founder covered climate change and a handful of conspiracy theories before shifting the conversation to money and taxes.

Ahead of his candid chat, he turned to Twitter to prove it was actually him answering the questions.

One Redditor asked Gates why he was purchasing "so much farmland," and whether he believed there was a problem with billionaires and "how much you can disproportionally acquire".

In response, the 67-year-old said he owned "less than 1/4000 of the farmland in the US" before suggesting that the super-rich should pay more in taxes.

He wrote: "I have invested in these farms to make them more productive and create more jobs. There isn't some grand scheme involved - in fact all these decisions are made by a professional investment team.

"In terms of the very rich I think they should pay a lot more in taxes and they should give away their wealth over time. It has been very fulfilling for me and is my full time job."

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Another person highlighted the cost of living crisis co-existing with stagnant salaries.

He asked the billionaire how we could get corporations to pay decent wages and to pay their taxes. The Redditor added: "More rather, what steps do we take to create an economy that's beneficial for the masses, not a select few?"

Gates acknowledged that things "are tough for a lot of people" before expressing his surprise that taxes "have not increased more."

"For example capital gains rates could be the same as ordinary income rates," he wrote.

The focus then turned to Gates' focus on healthcare and vaccines.

"When I saw that kids were dying who could be saved for less than $1000 per life I knew that had to be the top priority for my giving back," he wrote in response.

"There was almost no one funding work on diseases like malaria which was killing over a million kids a year then. We have made progress but it is still 400k and we are committed to get it to zero eventually."

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