3 ms·
Trump aims to eliminate income tax by end of term
- bpavuk 11mo agoa link without loginwall: https://archive.is/1gzFE https://archive.is/1gzFE
- techblueberry 11mo agoThis would certainly have impacts. Title gore on hn here though, this is almost certainly not going to happen and “Trump says” is an important qualifier.
- al2o3cr 11mo agoYeah, and monkeys may fly out of my butt
- xenospn 11mo agoNo way!
- treetalker 11mo agoSha!
- Bender 11mo agoJust a guess on my part but I would say that if I was trying to keep the population from selling assets and yanking investments if I knew I was about to do something that could shake confidence in the market.
- lawlessone 11mo ago>if I knew I was about to do something that could shake confidence in the market. He does something like that every week.
- Bender 11mo agoHe does something like that every week. So if I am right that would mean there may be something gnarly in the pipeline by contrast.
- lawlessone 11mo agohonestly, no idea, maybe you're right, i think it's more likely a play to boost his polling. late edit: I don't believe they think that far ahead :)
- kylehotchkiss 11mo agoSounds inflationary!
- pfannkuchen 11mo agoWell if the prices rise due to tariffs, and then more money is released via income tax reductions, the two effects may offset each other from the perspective of the consumer. Prices would rise, but the money available to the consumer would also increase. So I think it wouldn’t be the kind of inflation we usually see where prices rises but earnings don’t keep up. Wealthy people don’t pay much income tax anyway, so the effect on asset prices would not be huge probably. The middle class would have more money to spend on housing, which would increase housing prices if middle class spending was dominating housing prices, but with investor housing purchases being such a large component of house purchasing buyer pool it may mostly just shift who is buying houses over to the middle class a bit (due to available money increase going disproportionately to middle class people who actually have their spending power substantially eroded by income tax). Note that when I say wealthy people I mean independently wealthy, not high W2 earners, they aren’t wealthy IMO if their W2 job still generates most of their buying power.
- TheCleric 11mo agoI’m no economist but this seems like it would cause the government to now have conflicting priorities. The whole stated purpose of the tariffs were to boost domestic production. But now if this were done, the US government would need less or the same domestic production to ensure the coffers are filled. If, by some magic wand, this passes and domestic production can meet all of our supply needs, what then?
- stevenalowe 11mo agoFirst paragraph puts the mail in the coffin of this idea: “Offsetting the revenue from individual income taxes would require over $2.5 trillion a year in tariff collections, more than 10 times what the government actually took in during the last fiscal year”
- keernan 11mo agoSCOTUS has yet to rule on whether the Trump tariffs are a revenue-raising alternative to income taxes, rendering them an unconstitutional intrusion into the exclusive power of Congress; or regulatory tools for foreign affairs, which would bring them within the power of the Executive Branch... ...seemingly an odd time for Trump to make the statement that income taxes could be eliminated soon due to tariffs.