Scott Kirby, the chief executive of United Airlines, is drawing fire after telling the New York Times he supports a national wealth tax and inheritance taxes near 100% for the wealthiest estates — remarks that landed just as his own airline has been raising the cost of its elite frequent-flyer tiers.

"We should have a national wealth tax — it won't work by state because people will just move," Kirby told the Times in an interview published Sunday, framing the proposal as a direct response to widening inequality. He said he would personally pay the inheritance tax he's proposing, though he did not specify what wealth threshold would trigger it or what rate he'd support for the broader wealth tax itself.

A CEO's tax plan meets a CEO's pay stub

The remarks immediately drew pushback from business commentators who noted the apparent tension between Kirby's populist tax talk and his own compensation — Fox Business framed the story around his roughly $32 million pay package. Commentator Dagen McDowell argued on-air that a national wealth tax amounts to double taxation on money already taxed as income, and pointed to United's own elite-status fee hikes as evidence of a disconnect between Kirby's rhetoric and his company's pricing strategy.

FEW AIRLINE CEOS PUBLICLY BACK A NEAR-100% INHERITANCE TAX.

Aviation blog View From the Wing went further, arguing a uniform national wealth tax would likely run into constitutional trouble over the apportionment requirement for direct taxes, making the proposal more symbolic gesture than workable policy. The outlet also noted the plan would reward spending on luxuries over passing wealth to heirs — an incentive structure critics say could backfire.

Not every reaction was hostile. Travel site One Mile at a Time called Kirby's position unusual for an airline chief — "few airline CEOs publicly back a near-100% inheritance tax" — while still pressing him on why he hasn't proposed higher capital gains or corporate tax rates, which would more directly affect airline-industry profits like United's own.

What's next

Kirby has not laid out formal legislative language or signaled he's lobbying Congress on the idea, leaving the remarks for now in the category of a provocative personal opinion rather than a corporate policy push. United has not commented beyond Kirby's own remarks to the Times. The story has nonetheless injected a corporate-boardroom voice into the broader national debate over wealth taxation that's already simmering ahead of the midterms, with critics on both sides likely to keep citing Kirby's own pay and United's pricing as a test of whether he's willing to back the idea with more than words.