The Shopify co-founder’s brief reply on X touched a much larger nerve: whether wealth should buy more political power. Critics say the idea revives a rejected model of democracy.
Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke said people who pay no income tax should not be allowed to vote, and the backlash to his voting-rights remarks is now centered on Canada’s uneasy debate over wealth and political power. CBC News reported that Lütke endorsed a broader proposal to tie voting power to income tax paid, including no votes for those paying no income tax and as many as five votes for people paying $500,000 or more.
Critics of the proposal argue it would turn voting from a citizenship right into a financial status test. The fight is also drawing attention because Lütke leads Shopify, one of Canada’s most prominent technology companies.
The post that sparked it
The controversy began with a post on X from Eric Thor, identified by CBC News as a former TD Bank executive. Thor suggested a system of “weighted voting proportional to the amount of income tax you pay,” starting with zero votes for people who pay no income tax.
Under the example described in the post, someone paying between $1 and $100,000 in income tax would get one vote. The scale would rise from there, with a cap of five votes for those paying $500,000 or more.
Lütke replied: “Good system.”
That short response did most of the work. It was not a long policy paper, but it was clear enough to trigger a political backlash: the billionaire CEO of a major Canadian company appeared to approve of giving wealthier taxpayers more say at the ballot box while excluding others entirely.
A second remark widened the fire
The tax-weighted voting post was not the only comment drawing criticism. CBC News reported that Lütke also floated the idea of removing voting rights from retirees with pensions.
In that thread, he wrote that once a pension deal is “locked in and guaranteed,” the person becomes “a dependent,” adding that this should mean “no voting, just like dependents under age.” He framed the idea as letting “people with a stake in the future decide.”
That language sharpened the criticism because it did not only target the ultra-poor or people outside the workforce. It also gestured toward retirees — a large group that includes people who paid taxes for decades, served in public life, raised families, built businesses or worked in jobs with pensions as deferred compensation.
The underlying claim is familiar in political arguments: people who pay more into the system should have more power over it. The democratic objection is just as old: citizenship is not supposed to be prorated by a tax receipt.
Why critics called it undemocratic
John Beebe, director of the Democratic Engagement Exchange at Toronto Metropolitan University, told CBC News that even suggesting people should lose voting rights based on income or taxes paid is “destructive to our democracy.” He said the comments point to a broader problem of “incredibly wealthy people feeling like they should be calling all the shots.”
That is the core of the backlash. A tax-weighted system would not simply reward civic contribution; it would formalize political inequality. People with more taxable income would get a louder voice by law, while those with little or no income tax liability could be shut out.
Critics also note that income tax is not the only way people contribute to public life. People pay sales taxes, rent that helps cover property taxes, fees, payroll-related deductions and other costs. They also contribute through unpaid caregiving, military service, community work, parenting and labor that does not always translate into a large income tax bill.
There is also a practical distortion. Some wealthy people legally reduce income tax through deductions, corporate structures or capital gains treatment. Some low-income people pay little income tax because their earnings are low, not because they have no stake in the country.
Canada has moved away from this
The proposal lands so sharply because Canada’s voting history moved in the opposite direction. CBC News noted that at Confederation, voting was limited to men who were at least 21, British subjects by birth or naturalization, and property owners — rules that Elections Canada says excluded a large majority of the population.
Over time, the franchise expanded. Women gained federal voting rights in 1918, though many exclusions and barriers remained for years after. Property and status restrictions were gradually dismantled as the modern idea of democratic citizenship took hold.
That is why the new controversy feels less like a quirky tech-world thought experiment and more like a return to a discarded premise: that only certain kinds of people have earned the right to govern themselves.
Modern Canadian democracy is built around the opposite principle. A citizen’s vote is not supposed to grow because they are rich, shrink because they are poor or disappear because they are retired.
The Shopify factor matters
Lütke is not just another user posting on X. He is the co-founder and CEO of Shopify, the Ottawa-based e-commerce platform that CBC described as being worth more than $200 billion. That stature is part of why the remarks traveled so quickly.
When a billionaire executive endorses a system that would give more votes to high earners, critics hear more than personal frustration with tax policy. They hear someone who already has unusual access to power suggesting that the political system should make that imbalance explicit.
CBC cited reporting from The Logic that Shopify had been on a lobbying “blitz,” taking more meetings in Ottawa in the first three months of 2026 than it did in all of 2025. CBC also noted Lütke’s involvement with Build Canada, an advocacy group that includes high-profile technology leaders and has promoted ideas such as cutting federal spending, prioritizing artificial intelligence and implementing digital ID.
None of that means Lütke’s social media posts are Shopify policy. CBC reported that it contacted Shopify for comment and did not hear back by deadline. But it does explain why the remarks are being read through a larger lens: the overlap between tech wealth, lobbying and political influence.
The unanswered question now
The immediate question is whether Lütke will clarify, defend or walk back the remarks. A two-word endorsement on social media leaves room for interpretation, but the proposal he praised was explicit: no income tax paid, zero votes; higher income tax paid, more votes.
Supporters of tax-weighted voting, where they exist, tend to frame it as accountability: people who fund more of government should have more influence over how government spends. That argument can sound intuitive in a shareholder meeting.
Democracy is not a shareholder meeting. Governments do not govern only investors, donors or high earners. They set criminal laws, immigration rules, labor standards, health policy, infrastructure priorities and rights protections for everyone who lives under them.
That is why the backlash has been so intense. Lütke’s comments turned a familiar complaint about taxes into a much bigger question: whether political equality is a foundational rule, or a benefit reserved for those deemed economically useful enough to count.
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