An image mocking Amazon founder Jeff Bezos over tax payments went viral this week after appearing near a London bus stand. The billboard featured Bezos alongside pop star Katy Perry with a caption that read: “If you can send Katy Perry to space, you can afford to pay more taxes.”
The ad appeared days after Blue Origin — Bezos’ space venture — successfully launched its 11th human spaceflight from West Texas, featuring an all-female crew. The team included Perry, journalist Gayle King, Bezos’ fiancée Lauren Sánchez, former Nasa engineer Aisha Bowe, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen, and producer Keri Flynn. The suborbital flight crossed the Kármán line and lasted around 10 minutes.
“You’re brave, you’re bold… No limitations,” Perry said ahead of the launch, adding she drew inspiration from astrophysics readings and her role as a mother. “Being a mother just makes you level up with that type of power,” she noted.
While Blue Origin celebrated the flight as a historic milestone for women in space, the trip drew criticism online, with some pointing to the juxtaposition of extravagant space missions and tax avoidance claims. One viral post read, “We are literally just asking them to pay their fair share of taxes, which they don’t.”
Others, however, defended Bezos. One user commented, “Jeff Bezos is an American and as such pays income taxes to the US, thank you for coming to my TED talk.” Another wrote, “Sending more money to the government is more wasteful than sending money to space.”
