Diogenes
Nemo me impune lacessit
With Election Day around the corner, a desperate Donald Trump promised to end federal income taxes in two high-profile interviews this week, harking back to the 19th century, when the US relied on tariffs to fund federal spending.
The also-ran candidate has vowed to broadly impose tariffs, claiming without evidence they can generate trillions of dollars in revenue.
Trump was afraid to say he would eliminate federal corporate income and payroll taxes — which raise about half of the nearly $5 trillion in revenue that the federal government collects.
Seeking to walk back the gaffe, Trump adviser Jason Miller told reporters Saturday, "Eliminating the income tax could be a future aspirational goal.”
“It’s an absurd idea for many reasons, the biggest being that it is mathematically impossible to replace the income tax with tariffs,” Erica York, senior economist and research director at the right-leaning Tax Foundation, told CNN.
“Imports are a much smaller tax base than taxable income, and there’s no way to squeeze enough revenue from taxing imports to fully replace taxing income. A swap like this would hike taxes on working-class taxpayers and invite harmful retaliation against US exports.”
The also-ran candidate has vowed to broadly impose tariffs, claiming without evidence they can generate trillions of dollars in revenue.
Trump was afraid to say he would eliminate federal corporate income and payroll taxes — which raise about half of the nearly $5 trillion in revenue that the federal government collects.
Seeking to walk back the gaffe, Trump adviser Jason Miller told reporters Saturday, "Eliminating the income tax could be a future aspirational goal.”
“It’s an absurd idea for many reasons, the biggest being that it is mathematically impossible to replace the income tax with tariffs,” Erica York, senior economist and research director at the right-leaning Tax Foundation, told CNN.
“Imports are a much smaller tax base than taxable income, and there’s no way to squeeze enough revenue from taxing imports to fully replace taxing income. A swap like this would hike taxes on working-class taxpayers and invite harmful retaliation against US exports.”