Tax policy
Bernie Sanders bill would tax some AI activity
The Senate proposal would add an excise tax to systemically important AI activity, putting the biggest systems in line for a new cost if the measure advances.
A Senate tax proposal from Senator Bernie Sanders would add a new excise tax to systemically important AI activity. The key issue is how broadly that term is defined, since it would determine which companies and tools face the charge.
- The bill would add an excise tax to certain AI activity.
- The key question is what counts as “systemically important.”
- Companies could try to pass the cost on to customers.
- It was introduced in the Senate on June 18, 2026.
- A Senate tax proposal in Washington would aim at the AI work lawmakers decide is important enough to sit inside the tax code
A Senate tax proposal in Washington would aim at the AI work lawmakers decide is important enough to sit inside the tax code. Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, introduced the bill on June 18, 2026.
The measure would amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to impose an excise tax on systemically important AI activity. An excise tax is a tax on a specific activity or transaction, not a company’s overall profit. For AI developers and the companies that buy their tools, that could mean a new cost line attached to the most consequential systems they build or use.
The label that sets the reach
The phrase “systemically important” is doing the heavy lifting in Sanders’ bill. The proposal does not say every chatbot, image generator or software tool would be treated the same way. Instead, it points at the activity judged important enough to matter across the system.
That distinction matters because the narrower the definition, the more likely the tax hits a small group of large operators. A broader reading would make it easier for the cost to ripple through vendors and business customers that rely on advanced AI.
Who ends up paying
Taxes on business activity rarely stop at the first payer. If the measure became law, companies could try to fold the cost into software contracts, product prices or investment plans.
That is why the definition matters as much as the tax itself. The bill is narrow in form, but it points at a fast-growing technology that already shapes how businesses build products, answer customers and handle routine work.
How much the tax would matter in practice will depend on what counts as systemically important, because that is where the bill draws its line between ordinary AI use and the activity it means to target.