United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby earned $32.3 million last year, roughly 334 times the compensation of his company’s median employee. Now he says America’s wealthiest people should pay more in taxes, including an inheritance tax that could approach 100%.
That puts Kirby alongside other wealthy business leaders, including Bill Gates and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, who have publicly supported raising taxes on the rich.
“Wealth inequality has become a danger to our society, and we need to address that,” Kirby said in an interview with The New York Times published Sunday.
He continued: “We should have a national wealth tax — it won’t work by state because people will just move. And I think we should have inheritance taxes that get close to 100 percent at some level. I would pay them.”
The comments came in response to a question about declining public trust in CEOs. Kirby’s own pay offers a striking illustration of the economic divide he described.
What Kirby made last year
Kirby’s total 2025 compensation, according to United’s proxy statement, was $32.28 million and included $1.2 million in base salary, $22.6 million in stock awards, $8 million in non-equity incentive compensation, and roughly $500,000 in other compensation.
United’s median employee, meanwhile, received $96,670 in total compensation, according to the same filing. The gap mirrors a broader trend: CEO pay rose 11% in 2025 while worker pay rose just 0.5%, according to a study by the International Trade Union Confederation and Oxfam.
In the Dallas area, where Kirby lives, even though United is headquartered in Chicago, United advertised a part-time airport customer service representative position with a starting wage of $19.64 an hour. The job includes assisting passengers at boarding gates. Even working 40 hours a week at that rate, it would take roughly 790 years to match Kirby’s 2025 compensation, assuming no raises, bonuses, or overtime.
A widening wealth gap
Kirby’s warning comes as the wealth gap continues to widen. The richest 1% of American households held 32.5% of the nation’s total net worth in the second quarter of 2026, up from 31.1% a year earlier, according to Federal Reserve data. The bottom half of households held just 2.3%, down from 2.4% a year earlier.
Other top executives have acknowledged the backlash. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in July that he understands the anti-rich sentiment in some communities, and a survey earlier this year found that one in five Americans think it’s morally wrong to be a billionaire.
Not everyone welcomed Kirby’s remarks. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry wrote on X that if Kirby feels that strongly, “he could simply cut a check,” linking to the Treasury’s fund for public donations to pay down the national debt.
What the U.S. taxes now
Kirby did not specify the threshold for his proposed national wealth tax or how much someone would need to inherit before facing a rate approaching 100%. The U.S. has no federal inheritance tax, though a handful of states levy one. The federal estate tax, which is paid by the estate rather than heirs, carries a top marginal rate of 40%, with a $15 million basic exclusion amount for people who die in 2026, according to the IRS.
Kirby, a longtime airline executive who joined United as president in 2016 and became CEO in 2020, has lately made headlines for other reasons, including his reported interest in acquiring American Airlines.
Fortune asked United whether Kirby believes the gap between CEO and employee pay contributes to the inequality he described, and what tax thresholds and rates he would support. The airline did not respond.