Several members of Congress have proposed bills aimed at redistributing the gains of AI and protecting workers from AI displacement, while others have pushed back, warning that new taxes could chill AI investment or drive it offshore. Anthropic and OpenAI, some of the largest players in the AI industry, have themselves released policy guides weighing how changes in tax policy could mitigate AI’s economic risks. Anthropic, in particular, has argued that some approaches could distort investment even as they raise revenue.
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# Taxing the AI Companies
Some have pushed for direct levies on AI companies—the firms producing and selling access to frontier AI models. Recent proposals would have the federal government tax the revenues or profits generated from the sale of AI services, or even the equity of the firms themselves. With many of these frontier labs currently unprofitable, the proposals often focus on revenue or equity.
* **Taxing revenues or profits:** Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has suggested that [taxes on AI companies](https://darioamodei.com/post/policy-on-the-ai-exponential#2-macroeconomics-and-tax-policy:~:text=Long%2Dterm%20macroeconomic%20support.) could be one way to fund support systems for the AI-displaced labor force. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) has proposed an [AI Horizon Fund](https://www.kelly.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/KELLY-AI-FOR-AMERICA.pdf) that would use AI tax revenue to fund workforce retraining and infrastructure investments. [Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX)](https://casar.house.gov/media/press-releases/op-ed-american-prospect-tax-ai-create-jobs) has proposed taxing large AI developers on the greater of the [value of the tokens](https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/ai-tokens-explained/) they sell or their product revenue, with the rate rising automatically as national unemployment rises. Such a tax would likely be passed on to AI users.
* **Taxing equity:** Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has [proposed a bill](https://www.sanders.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/AmericanAIWealthFundTextv618.pdf) that would impose a one-time tax, payable in stock rather than cash, equal to 50% of any company with at least $200 million in annual gross receipts from AI-related activities, with those shares going to a newly created American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund. Some academic proposals have similarly championed [collective ownership of AI firms](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5615910) as a means of extracting compensation for the technology’s potential harms. These approaches could be subject to legal challenges. Nonetheless, even AI companies themselves have suggested equity-sharing arrangements with the government, including a proposal by [OpenAI to share 5% of its equity](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/02/openai-proposes-us-government-own-5percent-stake-to-address-political-blowback.html).