Why Trump Must END the Income Tax

The Left rages as Trump’s new Commerce Secretary announces the IRS, and even the income tax itself, are now in the administration’s crosshairs. The media is shuddering at the terrifying idea that lowly mortals like you and I might soon get to keep our hard-earned money. We’ll discuss why abolishing the income tax would be one of the greatest victories for liberty and prosperity in American history.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Today on The Conservative Rebel, the Marxist elites rage as Trump's new Commerce Secretary announces the IRS and even the income tax itself could now be in the administration's crosshairs. The media is shuddering at the terrifying idea that lowly mortals like you and I might soon get to keep our hard-earned money. After all, if they can't steal it from us, where will our wonderful public servants get the money they need to fund drag shows in Ecuador and transgender experiments on monkeys? How will they be able to keep sending money to foreign dictators? Will Americans be forced to learn how to survive without these necessary government services? The possibilities will horrify you. We'll discuss why abolishing the income tax would be one of the greatest victories for liberty and prosperity in American history. You're listening to The Conservative Rebel. Anyone who's been paying attention to politics the past few weeks must admit that so far the Trump administration has been wildly successful at implementing its agenda. In just four weeks, it's managed to decrease border crossings by 95%, deport large numbers of criminal aliens, it's managed to fire tens of thousands of useless bureaucrats, and free 1,500 J6 political prisoners. It's ended DEI programs and gender insanity in the federal government. It's banned men from women's sports. And that's just the highlight reel. If any Republican administration had managed to do all that in four years, it would be considered a success. Trump's done it in four weeks. But as impressive as all of that is, according to Howard Lutnick, Trump's new Secretary of Commerce, who was just confirmed a few days ago, we haven't seen anything yet. Trump is reportedly now planning to abolish the IRS and replace the income tax with tariffs. Here's what Lutnick had to say about it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:22

Well, think about it. Donald Trump announces the external revenue service, and his goal is very simple, to abolish. His goal is to abolish the internal revenue service and let all the outsiders pay. I mean, this is someone who is focused on America. Let's drive down our waste, fraud, and abuse. I'll give you an example. Cruise ships. You ever see a cruise ship with an American flag on the back? They have flags of, like, Liberia or Panama. None of them pay taxes. None. None of them pay taxes. Every supertanker, none pays taxes. Alcohol, all foreign alcohol, no taxes. This is going to end under Donald Trump and those taxes are going to be paid and Americans tax rates are going to come down. That's what Donald Trump wants to do.

SPEAKER_00: 3:11

Now, this isn't the first time we've heard about this plan. On the campaign trail, Trump hinted multiple times that he was seriously considering abolishing the federal income tax. I think he first announced it when he went on Joe Rogan's podcast, of course, and then in his inaugural address, this is what he said. Quote, Now, the income tax was once a sacred cow. Abolishing it used to be considered a radical, fringe, crazy, insane position. For example, when Ron Paul said he wanted to do just that during his 2012 presidential campaign, the media laughed at him. But now that Trump is saying it, and Trump's in the White House, they're not laughing anymore. Because if the past four weeks have proven anything, it's that Trump has his eye on the ball. He's dead serious about implementing his agenda to restore America to greatness, and he doesn't care what the media or the left has to say about it. Every time he even floats the possibility that this might happen, that he might abolish the federal income tax, the media loses it. They bring out all the economists and all the experts and all the talking heads and all those types to assure us it's impossible, and that even if it was possible, if we ended up abolishing this tax, it would somehow be a disaster. Here, for example, is CNN with this headline. The article goes on to say, No one wants to pay taxes, and practically every American dislikes the IRS. But, as the saying goes, the only guarantees in life are death and taxes. So the IRS is here to stay, right? Well, maybe not, according to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Donald Trump announced the External Revenue Service, and his goal is very simple, to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay. Lutnick said on Fox News Wednesday night. In other words, America will raise so much money from President Donald Trump's tariff plan that Americans will no longer need to pay income taxes. It sounds great, but it's riddled with problems. America raises about$3 trillion each year from income taxes. The United States also happens to import around$3 trillion worth of goods annually. So that means tariffs would have to be at least 100% on all imported goods for tariffs to replace income taxes, said Torsten Slocke, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, in a note to investors Thursday. The government would have to find the right fulcrum point to balance its revenue needs with consumer demand. That would mean much higher prices. So according to this article, abolishing the income tax would mean Trump would have to implement pretty heavy tariffs in order to compensate. But the assumption that it's making is a really big assumption, which is that the government has to take in the exact same amount of revenue that it currently takes in. And this is an argument you'll hear a lot from left-wingers. If you look at the article, according to Torsten Slocke, if we replaced the income tax with tariffs, the government would take in less money. And that's somehow supposed to be a bad thing, apparently. You can't stop the government from stealing trillions of dollars of Americans' hard-earned money, because then American families would get the money instead of the government. And we can't have that. Yeah, that's kind of the point, Torsten. The point is for the American people to be able to keep what they earn so they can prosper and flourish and succeed in life. And the fact that the expert class expects us to see this as some great tragedy, some great problem, that the government will take in trillions of dollars less, when they're not even addressing the possibility that they could cut spending, just reveals their disdain for the everyday Americans they claim to be looking out for. No, you can't let people keep their money, then the deficits will go up, the debt will go up, the government needs trillions of dollars every year or it will go deeper in debt. I wonder why that would be the case. Could it be that the same Democrats who are screaming about the deficits that this would allegedly create have spent their entire careers voting for wasteful spending that causes deficits? No, you liars. Deficits aren't caused because the government doesn't steal enough money. They're caused because the government votes to spend money it doesn't have. They're caused because the Democrats and neocons keep spending trillions of dollars on endless wars and pork-filled spending bills. Trying to fix our deficits by giving the spendthrifts in Congress more money is like trying to help some homeless vagrant overcome his drug addiction by giving him more heroin. No, you can't help a drug addict overcome his drug addiction by giving him more of the drug he's addicted to. Quite the opposite, actually. So here's a radical idea for you, Torsten. How about we stop lighting money on fire? How about we try that for once? It's a fringe idea, I know, but we could always try that. But to the media, we just don't understand. We normal, functional human beings who just want to be left alone and live our lives in peace. We're just far too self-centered. We people who want to abolish the income tax were just far too focused on the plight of the working class father trying to put food on the table for his children. To care about the poor, doe-eyed, mad scientist at the NIH or whatever whose big dream of making a life for himself doing Frankenstein transgender experiments on monkeys we've so callously crushed. Which is a real thing the government actually spent your money on, by the way. I am not making this up. But how selfish of us, how selfish of us to let the hard-working father keep his money instead of giving it to some sadistic mad scientist who has never done anything useful in his entire life and never will. How selfish of us to let Americans keep their hard-earned wages instead of shipping them overseas so some foreign dictator like Zelensky can buy himself a new sports car. Do you realize how elitist that argument is? We know how to spend your money better than you do. It's the same mentality, the exact same mentality, that all the monarchs and emperors of the 18th century had, but it's on steroids. But these cunning politicians have masked this elitist argument in layers and layers of feel-good populist sludge. Because the other argument you'll hear so often, you'll hear it a lot, is that the rich don't pay their fair share, so we need this tax system. We need to increase their tax bracket, increase the percentage they pay, because it needs to be fair. And the word fair is never defined. What is a fair share? Well, glad you asked, it's a share that's fair. But let's not get hung up on the details. The point is that we need to tax the evil rich people. That's essentially what these people think. And there are about 8,000 problems with that logic, but the most glaring one of them all is this. If you took away the wealth of every billionaire in America, every single one, you took all of their wealth and combined it, you could not fund the government for even one year. You could steal Elon Musk's entire fortune, and you would barely be able to fund the government for three weeks. Elon Musk, for those of you who don't know, is the richest man on Earth. If you took away every cent, not only from him, but from the 400 richest Americans in this country, the Forbes 400 list, You would still be over one trillion dollars underwater if you wanted to pay the government's bills for just one year. Just one year. So this tax the rich argument is just BS. They have no argument. The fact is that the vast majority of the income tax money is coming from middle class Americans. That's who they're taking it from. And The reason for that is not that the billionaires pay less, that's a very stupid lie, but because there are very, very few billionaires in the country to pay taxes. So the income tax is not something that protects the little guy, quote-unquote, at all. It harms the little guy. And no matter how much you tax the rich, you can never change that fact. So now that we've dealt with the spending aspect of this debate, with the tax the rich aspect of this debate, now that we've dealt with refuting the arguments against abolishing the income tax, here are my two main reasons why abolishing the income tax would be a wonderful move. My two arguments in favor of it. And the first reason is the one that you'll never hear anyone talk about practically. which is that the income tax is a moral abomination. It is evil. It is fundamentally wrong. And if that sounds extreme to you, That's only because we have been almost completely desensitized to it, because we've been forced to live with it for our entire lives, and our parents have had to live with it for their entire lives, and their grandparents and so on for a couple generations going back. So we don't know any different. We don't know what a world would be like without the income tax. And don't get me wrong, I realize that no sane person likes paying the income tax. I know that's the case. You know that's the case. Even the people who would be against that don't like it. My point, the thing I'm trying to say, is that most people tolerate it like it's just some little annoying thing in the background. Like it's some fly buzzing around in their peripheral vision or some itch on their back they can't scratch. They think it's a nuisance, that's for sure. But they don't see it in any kind of moral terms. Which is why whenever you complain about taxes, you'll hear some smart aleck say some dumb cliche like, well, the only guarantees in life are death and taxes. We can't get rid of this tax because it's a part of life. It's the way things have always been done. Taxes are good because they exist. You have to pay taxes because you have to pay taxes because you have to pay taxes because you have to pay taxes. Oh, and don't forget, the reason for all of that is that you have to pay taxes. And he'll be very proud of himself for being so much wiser and more mature and enlightened than you. And we're supposed to believe this is just some brilliant point. It's some brilliant conversation-ending takedown point, some brilliant golden nugget of wisdom. Yes, I know the income tax is a part of life, which is why I'm arguing that it shouldn't be. Arguing that we shouldn't abolish the income tax or any tax because it's a part of life is like arguing we shouldn't try to cure cancer because it's a part of life. or arguing that we shouldn't invent any invention that solves any problem at all because that problem is a part of life. There are a lot of problems that were a part of life that aren't a part of our lives anymore. Our ancestors, they lived in absolutely horrible conditions, absolutely horrible standards of living and all that compared to what we have. How were their lives improved? People did not accept that certain sufferings were just necessarily a part of life. They looked at this and said, you know what? I think I can fix this. There's a way to solve this problem. It doesn't have to be this way. And there were the naysayers who said, oh, it's a part of life. You can't do it. Well, we did it. We did it. And you know what? If you want the income tax to stay a part of your life for whatever reason, feel very free to send the IRS an annual donation. Feel very free to write them a check for tens of thousands of dollars every year. You're just as free to do that as a cancer patient would be free to reject whatever magical cure for cancer we might come up with in the future. I won't stop you, because it's not my problem, it's your problem. But it is my problem when you try to force everyone else to suffer unnecessarily along with you. The idea that the government can force you to pay 30% of everything you make, or 22%, or 40%, or whatever random percentage the people writing the tax code have decided you need to pay... For no reason, by the way, they just come up with that percentage totally arbitrarily. The idea that the government can do that and seize your home and everything you own and then lock you in a cage if you try to get out of it is insane. You can't have this system and have private property rights in any meaningful sense at the same time. It's just impossible. Because the only way to justify this income tax is that everything belongs to the government. Everything. Your money, your house, your property, all of it. Every dollar you earn, everything you have belongs to the government. Your entire paycheck belongs to the government. That's what you have to think to justify this. And then the government... in its generosity, decides how much of your money that you earned with your own toil and sweat it will let you keep. Maybe it's 70%. Maybe it's 90%. Who knows? They decide, because it doesn't belong to you. That's what you have to think. And when you add up all the different taxes you have to pay, the income tax, the property tax, sales tax, gas tax, death tax, excise tax, capital gains tax, utility tax, social security tax, more than half of everything you make is stolen from you by the government. Which means that under this system, for half of your life, you are a slave. You work six months out of the year as a slave to the government. From January to June, you wake up every single day, you brush your teeth, you get dressed, you go to work, you work eight hours, you come home. You didn't do that for you, you didn't do that for your wife, for your kids, for anyone except the government. You're a slave half your life. Are you happy about that? Here's another way of looking at it. If you're married and both you and your wife or both you and your husband work, one of you is a slave 100% of the time. One of you is toiling eight hours a day, five days a week, around 260 days a year or whatever it is. And you're not doing it for yourself. You're not doing it for your spouse or your kids. You're doing it for the government. You're doing it for the most corrupt people on the planet. People who hate your guts and are hell-bent on destroying your country and your culture and your values and your religion, and in general on making your life miserable so they can keep and expand their power. Why should you accept that? Why should you tolerate that? In what sense should that be a fact of life we just learn to live with? Our founders sure didn't learn to live with it, if you want to know the truth. The American Revolution started because of taxes. How much were the British making them pay? You might ask, you might wonder. Oh, estimates vary, but it was somewhere around 1 or 2% of their incomes. paid indirectly through taxes on tea and different random things. That's right, the Patriot Army staged a violent revolution against a government that was around, what, 50 times less oppressive than the government we live under today. In just that one area alone, They fought, they bled, they died violent, bloody, gruesome deaths to free themselves from a king that would be considered a radical libertarian free marketer today. The taxes were so light, you almost couldn't notice them. But the patriots were so dedicated to the principles of liberty that they were willing to die to stop it. And now we who are descended from these heroes accept as some fact of life a system that's 50 times as oppressive as King George's. And people think, people think that there are two categories that you can separate political issues into. Moral issues like abortion and that type of thing, and economic issues like this. The income tax, it's totally separate from the moral issues in their mind. Morality doesn't apply to it. You can't really look at it through any moral lens. But this is clearly immoral. To force people to work half their lives as a slave, practically. To take 30% of everything they earn when they're trying to raise a family, feed the family, do all the things you need to do in life, that is immoral, that is evil. Period. And that's the first reason the income tax needs to be abolished. It's immoral, and it's tyrannical. And the second reason is this. This is the second reason, this is the first reason you'll typically hear people who want to abolish the income tax talk about. But this is a secondary consideration when you think about the first one, in my mind. This is it. If Trump abolished the income tax, your life and the life of every American would almost instantly get far better. Abolishing the income tax would do more to restore prosperity and greatness to this country than almost anything Trump could do. Taxes are the number one expense of the average American family. Number one expense. More than groceries, more than gas, more than anything else. That expense would increase instantly plummet by a lot. It would go down significantly. It, of course, would not go away altogether, since the income tax is just one of approximately four billion different taxes out there, but it's by far the biggest tax for most people. So this move, abolishing the income tax, would effectively give every worker in the country a substantial pay raise. We're talking thousands, tens of thousands of dollars additionally every year in your pocket instead of in the government's. Imagine what that could do for you or your family. You would have tens of thousands of dollars more every year to buy groceries, to buy gas, to pay the rent, to pay off the house, to pay off your car or your credit card, to start a new business, you name it. It would do that for you, and it would do that for millions of families across the country. That would create an economic boom, the likes of which we have not seen since the roaring 20s, although it might even be better than that. It might just be the greatest economic boom in history, since even in the roaring 20s we had a moderate income tax, relatively speaking. So jobs would come flooding back to the country. Businesses would boom. Abolishing the income tax would be an extremely effective way to get the economy out of this recession that we're still in from the Biden administration. Abolishing the income tax would be both morally righteous and make a lot of financial sense. And maybe this is just a pipe dream. Maybe this will never happen. We have to be realistic. But for once in our lifetimes, we have a president at least who is seriously considering possibilities like this. The scales are falling from people's eyes. Even if this tax isn't abolished in the next four years, millions of people's eyes have been opened to just how destructive and repressive our tax system is. We can all hope, I think, that the seed of the revival of economic freedom in this country has been planted. Thanks for listening to The Conservative Rebel. If you like it, please like, subscribe, and follow the show. I'll see you on the next episode.