President Trump is apparently pushing for a higher tax rate. That’s a nonstarter.
The tax regime that President Trump put into place in his first term, his tax cuts, were a boon to the economy. They actually disproportionately benefited people who were middle and lower class. Revising the tax regime to pay for more loopholes and tax breaks in particular areas by increasing taxes on the highest income earners will sink investment capital. That&#8217;s what it does.
As somebody who has been in most tax brackets at one point in my life, I can tell you I will invest less if I have less money to invest. That&#8217;s true for everyone who is a high net earner. Increasing the income tax on the top income tax bracket in order to pay for more useless government spending — because nobody has the actual guts to say in American politics that we spend too much on our social welfare programs, which we do, particularly our means tested social welfare programs — will break the American economy.
It&#8217;s like shifting deckchairs on the Titanic.
Increasing the marginal tax rate at the top by 2% or something similar is not going to save anything. If the Republican Party is now the tax-raising party and the tariff party, we will have to see how that works out for them at the polls.
I do not think it is going to work out particularly well.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2196-member-exclusive?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
According to some reports, President Trump is privately urging speaker Mike Johnson to raise the top tax rate and close the so-called “carried interest loophole.”
You hear about the “carried interest loophole” all the time. Very often the media will use a term and call it a loophole when it&#8217;s not a loophole at all. Here’s an example: They will refer to a “gun show loophole,” claiming that if you&#8217;re a federally licensed firearms dealer, you can just go to a gun show and sell a gun randomly, which is not true. They say the “gun show loophole” means a private person who sells a gun to his friend doesn&#8217;t have to necessarily go through all of the federal background check, which just means that if you are a federally licensed firearms dealer and you&#8217;re a private individual, that these rules don&#8217;t apply to you in the same way.
So what is the “carried interest loophole”? Is it a loophole at all? What is carried interest? “Carried interest” works like this: Fund managers typically receive two forms of compensation. If you work at hedge fund or in private equity or venture capital, you have two forms of being paid.
One is a management fee, which is just income. You simply get paid a flat fee to handle people&#8217;s portfolios.
Then there&#8217;s the so-called “carried interest,” which is a share of the fund&#8217;s profits. The fund makes a profit; you get a share of the profit. But in order for it to qualify for capital gains tax as opposed to income tax, the underlying investments have to be held for more than three years.
Management fees are taxed at the regular income rate; carried interest is taxed as the long-term capital gain at a maximum rate of 20% if the underlying investments are held for more than three years.
So here is the question. If you have a share of the profits, isn&#8217;t that more like owning a stock? That&#8217;s the reason why it&#8217;s not treated as a form of typical income. It&#8217;s more like selling a stock because you actually are getting a share of stock that was profitable and then it was sold. Thus it&#8217;s more like a capital gain than it is like income.
Now you can make an argument that capital gains should be taxed the same as income. But stop pretending that the “carried interest loophole” is a form of normal income that&#8217;s getting carved out for hedge fund managers. That&#8217;s not what it is.
This populist leftist economic policy for heavy trade restrictionism for the sake of trade restrictionism as a subsidy to particular areas of the American economy added to higher tax rates, and I&#8217;m wondering what the difference is between that economic policy per se and leftist Democrat senator Sherrod Brown&#8217;s economic policy when he was senator from Ohio.
That is not the economic policy that President Trump enacted in his first term that was so wildly successful in increasing the earnings of everybody from the bottom part of the spectrum to the top part of the spectrum.
This would be a mistake.

Trump Hails The Election Of First US Pope As A ‘Great Honor’

Why Raising The Top Tax Rate Is A Recipe For Economic Decline

Ben Shapiro

Economy

Federal Government

Income tax

Opinion

President Trump

Taxes

Wealth Tax

Welfare

President Donald Trump on Thursday extended the freeze on hiring new government workers for another 90 days.
The administration has said that the freeze is part of an effort to make the government more efficient and promote fiscal responsibility. The freeze, now in effect until July 15, includes exceptions for the military and other national security-related positions. 
“No Federal civilian position that is presently vacant may be filled, and no new position may be created, except as otherwise provided for in this memorandum or required by applicable law,” Trump wrote in a memo. “In carrying out this memorandum, the heads of agencies shall seek efficient use of existing personnel and funds to improve public services and the delivery of those services.”
The memorandum said that the freeze does not apply to military personnel of the Armed Forces or positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, and public safety. Agencies are allowed to apply for exemptions to the hiring freeze to the Office of Management and Budget, which can grant exemptions on a case-by-case basis.
&#8220;The extension of the hiring freeze is a critical step in shrinking the federal government and ensuring taxpayer dollars are used efficiently,&#8221; the White House <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-extends-the-hiring-freeze/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;The American people elected President Trump to drain the swamp and end ineffective government programs that empower government without achieving measurable results.&#8221;
For the IRS, Trump&#8217;s memo says the staffing moratorium will remain in effect until otherwise determined by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in consultation with OMB Director Russ Vought and acting Department of Government Efficiency Administrator Amy Gleason.
If they determine &#8220;that it is in the national interest to terminate the freeze,&#8221; they are directed to publish a notice in the Federal Register.
The IRS has already <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tax-day-miracle-over-20k-irs-employees-took-trumps-second-buyout-offer" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lost thousands</a> of employees this year, with more than 20,000 taking buyout offers from the Trump administration to leave their positions, and another 7,000 probationary workers being terminated. The firings are currently being challenged in court.
After the freeze ends for the other government departments and agencies, the White House said that federal entities will only be allowed to hire one new employee for every four that leave. The White House said that during former President Joe Biden&#8217;s last two years in office, one out of every four new jobs was in government. 
“President Trump is committed to reversing this trend by prioritizing private-sector job growth and reducing the federal workforce to focus on essential functions,” the White House said.

MixCollage-18-Apr-2025-09-58-AM-7418

Trump Extends Hiring Freeze: ‘Critical Step In Shrinking The Federal Govt’

Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Donald Trump

Executive

General

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Politics

White House

According to The Washington Post, the Trump administration is pushing the Internal Revenue Service to revoke Harvard University’s tax-exempt status.
The Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/04/16/trump-harvard-tax-exempt-irs/">reported</a> that three sources informed the outlet that President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration had asked the IRS to make the move, although there is no confirmation that it has done so. WaPo also reported that its sources claimed Andrew De Mello, the IRS’s acting chief counsel, was asked by the Treasury Department to take the action. Sources also claimed this is part of a feud with Ivy League schools that the Trump administration views as &#8220;woke.&#8221;
“I think they’re going to go after a whole bunch of them,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) said. “I’m not sure why we need to be funding people who aggressively refuse to give up a variety of values and structures that most Americans don’t agree with.”
On Tuesday. President Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114342374504628520">posted</a> on Truth Social, “Perhaps Harvard should lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity if it keeps pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness?’ Remember, Tax Exempt Status is totally contingent on acting in the PUBLIC INTEREST!”
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields stated: &#8220;Any forthcoming actions by the IRS will be conducted independently of the president, and investigations into any institution’s violations of its tax status were initiated prior to the president’s TRUTH.”
In January 2024, Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-MO), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/01/10/jason-smith-harvard-mit-penn-might-not-deserve-tax-exemption-00134815" target="_blank" rel="noopener">suggested</a> that the responses of Harvard, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT to the antisemitism on their campuses might justify revoking their tax-exempt status. The college’s actions “raise several questions, including whether your institutions are fulfilling their educational purposes as required to receive 501c3 tax-exempt status &#8230;”
On Monday, the Trump administration’s Department of Education announced it would freeze $2.2 billion in multi-year grants and $60 million in multi-year contract value to Harvard University after the school said it would not comply with the Trump administration’s demand that the university <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Harvard-Response-2025-04-14.pdf">claimed</a> would “invade university freedoms.”
Last Friday, the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services sent a <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/research-funding/wp-content/uploads/sites/16/2025/04/Letter-Sent-to-Harvard-2025-04-11.pdf">letter</a> to Harvard in which they stated, “By August 2025, the University must adopt and implement merit-based hiring policies, and cease all preferences based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin …” adding that the same attitude must prevail in admissions policies. The correspondence also declared that by the same date, the university must “prevent admitting students hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence, including students supportive of terrorism and anti-Semitism.”
The university “shall commission an external party … to audit the student body, faculty and leadership for viewpoint diversity” by August 2025, the letter continued, in order to ensure that the leftist perspective that dominates the university should be contrasted with other viewpoints.
Alan Garber, the president of Harvard University, responded with a <a href="https://www.harvard.edu/president/news/2025/the-promise-of-american-higher-education/">statement</a> in which he said, “We have informed the administration through our legal counsel that we will not accept their proposed agreement,” contending, “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights” and claiming the administration’s demands violated “Harvard’s First Amendment rights … threatens our values as a private institution devoted to the pursuit, production, and dissemination of knowledge.”

Harvard University

Trump Admin Wants IRS To Quash Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status: Report

Education

Harvard

Washington Post

Wokeness

As a former member of the House Ways and Means Committee, the leading tax-writing body in Congress, I am encouraged to see the White House finally providing the legislative branch the support it needs to reform the Internal Revenue Service.
During a recent Ways and Means subcommittee hearing, Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) stated, &#8220;Taxpayers deserve an agency that keeps up with the times, operates efficiently, and acts as a responsible fiduciary of the American people&#8217;s money.&#8221; Unfortunately, for generations, they have received anything but this. Everyone knows that the IRS has been plagued by inefficiency, poor customer service, and outdated operational processes. It is no surprise that it remains one of the most unpopular federal agencies.
Under President Donald J. Trump&#8217;s leadership, real change is finally underway.
On March 25, he signed an executive order directing the IRS to modernize its payment processing — transitioning it away from slow, outdated mail-based methods and towards electronic payment processing. This long-overdue move will significantly benefit millions of Americans each year, reducing delays and improving agency efficiency.
More importantly, however, Trump is forcing the IRS to begin operating like a business, not a bureaucracy.
In January, he issued a hiring freeze on IRS employees, preventing the agency from filling new or vacant positions so that his administration can assess what is (and isn&#8217;t needed). The importance of this move can&#8217;t be overstated.
Before Trump took office, the IRS appeared to be undergoing an identity crisis, expanding beyond its intended role without first working out the kinks of delivering on its core mission (tax collection). Before it hires thousands more employees to further this misguided expansion, the administration is wisely insisting on a strategic reassessment.
A prime example of the IRS&#8217;s overreach is its recent attempt to enter the tax preparation business. Despite the existence of highly effective private-sector solutions, the IRS launched a pilot program in 2024. A Treasury Department Inspector General report from March 20, 2025, revealed serious flaws. For example, the Direct File program failed to allow taxpayers to claim key deductions, including the education tax credit — potentially costing some filers nearly $1,000 in overpayments.
The system also proved rather complicated to use, so only one-third of those who started a return through Direct File actually completed and filed an accepted one.
The cost of Direct File? A staggering $61 million once over 2.3 million use it, at least according to IRS estimates — though the Inspector General warns that actual costs may be even higher.
Why is the IRS expanding its reach into tax preparation while continuing to fail at its core responsibility — tax collection?
In 2022, the agency reported a tax gap — the difference between taxes owed and taxes collected — of $606 billion.
Despite receiving an $80 billion funding boost from the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS has yet to show any real progress in closing this gap.
Maybe that is because, instead of focusing on its fundamental mission, it is diverting resources to unnecessary new initiatives that create more inefficiencies and confusion.
President Trump understands that before an organization expands, it must first perfect its primary function.
Successful businesses refine their operations before scaling; failing ones expand too early and collapse under their own inefficiencies. The IRS is behaving like the latter — a bloated bureaucracy that is overextending itself.
That&#8217;s why Trump&#8217;s IRS hiring freeze is so crucial. By pausing new hires, the administration is forcing the agency to reassess its priorities, eliminate waste, and become a leaner, more effective agency. This is common sense and deserves broad bipartisan support.
The Ways and Means Committee will undoubtedly back these necessary reforms, and for the sake of American taxpayers, the rest of Congress should do the same. The future of meaningful IRS modernization depends on it.
 * * *
Mike Bishop represented Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019, where he served on the Committee on Ways and Means.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Tax Day 2025: Why Trump’s Effort To Reign In The IRS Makes Sense

Trump Administration

U.S. House of Representatives

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and two other nonprofit organizations have come under fire for allegedly implementing scholarship and career advancement programs that discriminate against white Americans, potentially violating federal law and jeopardizing their tax-exempt status.
The American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) reported three organizations, the Gates Foundation, the Lagrant Foundation, and the Creative Capital Foundation, in <a href="https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2655691/American_Alliance_for_Equal_Rights_Files_Request_to_IRS.pdf?p=pdf">letters to the IRS</a>, claiming the nonprofits have &#8220;intentionally&#8221; discriminated against white people.
These cases of discrimination, AAER says, constitute &#8220;sufficient grounds&#8221; for the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt statuses of these three organizations.
Edward Blum, the president of the AAER, blasted the groups for engaging in race-based discrimination while enjoying public subsidies on account of their tax-exempt status. “Organizations that discriminate based on race—whether their intentions are benevolent or not—are not eligible for public subsidies through the tax code,” Blum asserted. “The IRS must act to uphold the law.”
The Gates Foundation, AAER says, is “intentionally discriminating against white students by excluding them from the tuition assistance and specialized support that it provides to students of every other race or ethnicity.” The foundation’s Gates Scholarship states that the program is a “highly selective, last dollar scholarship for outstanding, minority high school students” before listing acceptable racial and ethnic backgrounds in its eligibility requirements.
A 2022 video advertising the Gates Scholarship <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxxirXy4nA4">reaffirms</a> that only &#8220;low-income, minority students&#8221; are eligible. The program is only open to students who are &#8220;African American, Hispanic American, Asian American, or Native American.&#8221;
AAER also blasted the Lagrant Foundation, which it similarly accuses of engaging in race-based discrimination against whites.
The Lagrant Foundation partners with large corporations like Walmart, Microsoft, and Charles Schwab and seeks to “increase the number of ethnic minorities in the fields of advertising, marketing and public relations.” It lists the approved racial and ethnic backgrounds eligible for the program, which is limited to African Americans, Alaska Natives, Asian Americans, and Hispanics.
Another organization, called Creative Capital, teamed up with the leftist Skoll Foundation to similarly engage in discrimination, AAER claimed in its letter.
Skoll and Creative Capital, which provides funding to artists, worked alongside Kickstarter “to launch a $500,000 Creative Capital x Skoll Foundation Fund that backs projects by Asian, Black, Indigenous, and Latinx creators on the crowdfunding platform.”
Artists selected for the program were also given “access to Creative Capital’s vast educational resources and workshops at no-charge” and “strategic guidance” from “Kickstarter’s category experts.”
“These organizations are free to operate as they wish—but not with the public subsidy that tax-exempt status provides,” Blum charged. “Racial discrimination—whether in scholarships, professional development, or artistic grants—violates public policy and must not be underwritten by American taxpayers.”
The three nonprofits are far from the only organizations accused of openly engaging in blatant race-based discrimination in the name of DEI, however. One Massachusetts music nonprofit ran a “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/music-ensemble-hosts-bipoc-internship-barring-white-applicants-citing-systemic-allyship">BIPOC internship</a>” that similarly excluded white people, informing applicants that “we welcome Black, Indigenous, and other persons of color to apply.”
A wide range of corporations have also discriminated against white applicants, a series of Daily Wire investigations revealed. <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nascar-takes-down-blatantly-illegal-racial-requirement-for-internship-after-daily-wire-report">NASCAR</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/major-bank-pharmaceutical-giant-participated-in-mckinsey-training-that-banned-white-people">McKinsey and Company</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/oracle-internship-scholarship-opportunities-bar-whites-and-asians-on-the-basis-of-race">Oracle</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/apple-entrepreneur-camp-program-bars-applicants-based-on-race">Apple</a>, and various other corporations appear to have engaged in openly discriminatory practices in the name of DEI.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates Foundation, Other Nonprofits Could Lose Tax-Exempt Status Over Anti-White Discrimination

Discrimination

Diversity

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Social Issues

North Carolina Congressman Mark Harris is leading a push to protect pastors who make political statements from being punished by the IRS, he told The Daily Wire. 
Harris on Monday will introduce the “Free Speech Fairness Act,” to make it clear in law that religious leaders can make statements about political candidates and not have to worry about their churches losing tax-exempt status. The bill is specifically aimed at countering the 1954 Johnson Amendment, which restricts churches and other non-profits from endorsing or opposing political candidates. 
“The whole idea was in contrast to Americans’ inalienable rights to free speech and the free exercise of religion,” Harris told The Daily Wire. “It currently puts the IRS in a position of judge and jury on comments that are going to be made by ministers from the pulpit and all speech from non-profits.”
Harris, a Baptist minister, said that the Johnson Amendment had been used as a “tool to silence religious leaders and churches.” He said his legislation would restore free speech to religious leaders and non-profits. 
Senator James Lankford (R-OK) will introduce a companion measure co-sponsored by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the Senate. 
“The First Amendment protects Americans’ right to freedom of speech and religious freedom without the threat of interference from Congress,&#8221; Lankford told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Fundamental American values must extend to everyone, including pastors, social workers, or non-profit employees and volunteers. Everyone should have their constitutional rights to assembly, free speech, freedom of religion and free press protected.”
The bill would “allow charitable organizations to make statements relating to political campaigns if such statements are made in the ordinary course of carrying out its tax exempt purpose” and if no meaningful expenses are incurred. For example, a pastor could comment on a political candidate during a sermon, or the president of a crisis pregnancy center could point to a candidate&#8217;s record on abortion in a newsletter. 
The legislation would not allow churches or non-profits to become political action committees, Harris said. 
”We’re not looking for churches to become super PACS, that is certainly not the purpose of this,” he told The Daily Wire. “But it is to really restore free speech to the pulpits of America without any threat of our tax code.” 
In the House, the bill has already picked up 14 co-sponsors, including Reps. Michael Guest (MS), Randy Weber (TX), Barry Moore (AL), Clay Higgins (LA), Glenn Grothman (WI), Keith Self (TX), Michael Baumgartner (WA), Mark Messmer (IN), Tim Walberg (MI), Marlin Stutzman (IN), David Rouzer (NC), Doug LaMalfa (CA), Andy Ogles (TN), Abe Hamadeh (AZ), and Mary Miller (IL). 
House Speaker Mike Johnson <a href="https://scalise.house.gov/press-release/scalise-hice-johnson-lankford-reintroduce-free-speech-fairness-act" target="_blank" rel="noopener">introduced</a> similar legislation in 2019 alongside House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.
The proposal is also backed by over a dozen conservative groups including the Alliance Defending Freedom, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, Catholic Vote, the America First Policy Institute, and others.
Back in 2017, President Donald Trump promised to &#8220;destroy&#8221; the Johnson Amendment to &#8220;allow our representatives of faith to speak freely and without fear of retribution.&#8221; To that effect, Trump signed an <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2017/05/09/2017-09574/promoting-free-speech-and-religious-liberty" target="_blank" rel="noopener">executive order</a> in May 2017 to explicitly protect religious leaders speaking out on politics.

Mark Harris wont face state charges in N.C. 9th District ballot fraud case

EXCLUSIVE: North Carolina Republican Leads Effort To ‘Restore’ Free Speech For Pastors, Churches

First Amendment

Free Speech

James Lankford

North Carolina

Religious Liberty

The IRS may soon use its taxpayer database to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) locate illegal aliens for deportation.
The tax agency is close to an agreement with ICE for agents to crosscheck key information on aliens with the taxpayer database, such as a home address. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees ICE, would not have direct access to IRS systems, but would be able to verify information with IRS agents, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/us/politics/irs-ice-immigrants-deportation.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The New York Times</a>.
The Trump administration has tried before to tap into the IRS’ extensive servers to aid in alien deportations. The IRS has resisted such plans over risks to sensitive taxpayer information and concern of violating federal law. The new agreement would be a breakthrough for the administration toward its goal of surging deportations.
While the IRS typically keeps taxpayer information away from other agencies, the IRS does share information with law enforcement on a limited basis. Such information sharing typically comes after a court order, according to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2025/03/22/ice-irs-immigrants-deport/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Washington Post</a>.
Many illegal aliens working in the United States file taxes to the IRS, a practice the agency has encouraged. The IRS has a special nine-digit code for workers without a social security number called an individual taxpayer identification number. Illegal immigrant filings contain a slew of personal information, such as home addresses, employer names, and income.
The details of the agreement are currently being finalized, according to NYT.
The Trump administration replaced the top lawyer at the IRS earlier this month after running into headwinds getting the Department of Government Efficiency access to the tax agency.
In addition to seeking aid from the IRS, the DHS has redirected a number of agents in the department toward investigating potential deportees, according to <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/thousands-agents-diverted-trump-immigration-crackdown-2025-03-22/">Reuters</a>. The reorganization involves taking agents off their typical beats to work on identifying and finding illegal aliens for deportation.
The Trump administration is “mobilizing federal and state law enforcement to find, arrest, and deport illegal aliens,” Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin told Reuters in a statement.
The DHS reshuffle echoes a similar overhaul under former President Joe Biden when FBI agents were redirected toward investigating and building cases against alleged January 6, 2021, Capitol rioters.

IRS May Help ICE Track Down Illegal Aliens For Deportation

Department of Homeland Security

Deportations

Illegal Immigration

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

U.S.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick revealed that when he asked President Donald Trump if the federal government could eliminate income taxes on all Americans making less than $150,000 a year if the Trump administration could balance the budget, Trump answered, “Sure.”
Lutnick appeared on the “All In” <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@allin" target="_blank" rel="noopener">podcast</a>, where he spoke about balancing the budget before speaking of Trump and income taxes.
“I’m in the car with him and I said we’re going to balance the budget,’ Lutnick recalled. “And I said, ‘But I have one favor to ask you: If we can balance the budget for you, will you agree to waive all income tax for every person who makes less than $150k a year in the United States of America?’ Which, by the way, is about 85% of Americans. And the reason you want to work for Donald Trump is he looks at me, he goes, ‘Sure.’ You realize, the President of the United States said, ‘If you balance the budget, sure.’ And he’s not lying; he’s not kidding. He’s like, ‘Yeah.’”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Commerce Secretary <a href="https://twitter.com/howardlutnick?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@howardlutnick</a> says eliminating income taxes is a real possibility👀
&quot;I&#39;m in the car with [<a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a>] &#8230; I said &#39;I have one favor to ask you, if we can balance the budget for you, will you agree to waive all income taxes for every person who makes less… <a href="https://t.co/aDnXcY2KbN">pic.twitter.com/aDnXcY2KbN</a>
&mdash; Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) <a href="https://twitter.com/TrumpWarRoom/status/1903074178938413542?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 21, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&nbsp;
Lutnick launched into a history tour to explain how tariffs had worked in the past:
<blockquote>
America was built on tariffs with no income tax. No income tax until 1913. None, greatest, richest country in the world. So when Donald Trump says, “Make America Great Again,” what he’s talking about is from 1880 to 1913, when the country had so much money that we had blue-ribbon commissions to try to figure out how to spend the money. And no income tax. Then we put in the income tax in 1913. Why? Because we’re entering World War I, and don’t we all need to contribute to protect democracy and protect our way of life?
Then what happens is the world goes into chaos; we come out of chaos, and then we’re starting to think, “Well, what do we do? What do we do?” And then in 1929 the stock market crashes. By 1933, we start to say, “Oh, whoa, whoa, God, we forgot. We need to do tariffs.’” 1933? How can you do tariffs when the market’s crashed, the world’s going into depression and you’re going to do tariffs in 1933. You can’t charge the rest of the world money unless the rest of the world’s okay. So it was too little, too late.
So then we come out of World War II. It’s 1945; we need to rebuild the world. So we decide we’re going to take our tariffs down, and we’ll let them — here’s the key — let them have tariffs be up and we will export the power of our economy to let them rebuild. And we let them rebuild. And that’s what happened. So in 1945 we have the Marshall Plan; and we do it in Japan, of course, cause they need to be rebuilt. What’s the difference. They need to be rebuilt.
And then what happens is we have the fifties, and we have the Korean War. So we let them rebuild, which means we have low tariffs here, high tariffs there. Then we have the Vietnam War. So now all of a sudden we have all of Southeast Asia. Low tariffs here, high tariffs there.
You know what’s the best example I can give you to make it crystal-clear? Kuwait. We spent almost $100 billion freeing Kuwait. You know who had the highest tariffs against the United States of America? The number one country with the highest tariffs against the United States of America? Kuwait.
</blockquote>

Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick

Lutnick: Trump Said If We Balance The Budget, No Income Tax On Earners Making Less Than $150K

Department of Commerce

Howard Lutnick

There&#8217;s an old line from one of Ronald Reagan&#8217;s press conferences that you&#8217;ve probably heard before. He&#8217;s talking about trade embargoes and inflation and how farmers in Illinois are being impacted by government policy. 
He begins with one of his trademark quotes, by saying:
<blockquote>The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I&#8217;m from the Government, and I&#8217;m here to help.</blockquote>
The line obviously resonated, and not just with the farmers who were watching that press conference in Chicago — anyone who&#8217;s ever interacted with the government understood immediately what Reagan was getting at. Most of the time, when the government gets more involved in your life for whatever reason, it&#8217;s a good indicator that your life is about to get worse. And normal people are scared of that possibility, for good reason.
At the same time, Reagan&#8217;s one-liner raised a question that, until now, has gone unanswered. And that question is this: If everyday people are mortally terrified of government intervention in their lives, then what exactly do government bureaucrats fear, above all else? What short, unassuming sentence could possibly terrorize the entire federal workforce, in the same way that the government is capable of terrorizing everyday citizens?
A couple of days ago, courtesy of Elon Musk and DOGE, we learned the answer to those questions. We finally learned how to usher in a state of total panic in the federal government, in just a few short words. It turns out that all you need to do, if you want federal bureaucrats to melt down in a very public and humiliating fashion, is ask them what they did last week. That&#8217;s it. To bring the entire federal bureaucracy to its knees, you just need to pose a question that every single private-sector worker on the planet is able to answer, and knows they must be able to answer, or they will be fired.
As you may have seen by now, here&#8217;s the email I&#8217;m talking about. It was sent by the Office of Personnel Management, which is essentially the HR department of the federal government. And it was clearly drafted by Elon Musk, who famously asked the same question to the old CEO of Twitter (before Musk took over the company and fired him). Here&#8217;s what it looked like:
<div id="attachment_882973" style="width: 315px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-882973" class="size-large wp-image-882973" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GkbOXsMXgAALn5p-305x576.jpeg" alt="Screenshot: iPhone" width="305" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GkbOXsMXgAALn5p-305x576.jpeg 305w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GkbOXsMXgAALn5p-159x300.jpeg 159w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GkbOXsMXgAALn5p-768x1451.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GkbOXsMXgAALn5p-813x1536.jpeg 813w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/GkbOXsMXgAALn5p.jpeg 1084w" sizes="(max-width: 305px) 100vw, 305px" />Screenshot: iPhone</div>
As you can see, it reads, &#8220;Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.&#8221; You will not find a less threatening, more straightforward question that an employer could possibly ask an employee. I struggle to think of any remotely productive worker, in any context, who would have any difficulty answering this question. A janitor could say he mopped five floors. A plumber could say he fixed five toilets. A restaurant worker could say he served a certain number of tables, or cleaned a certain number of dishes. A lawyer or consultant or anyone else with an hourly rate could produce a timesheet that outlines everything he did, at every single moment of the day. Okay, well a consultant may not be able to do that but most workers in the private sector — both white collar and blue collar — can and often must.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ep-1543-incompetent-federal-employees-panic-when-asked-what-they-do-all-day" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show</a></h3>
But for many federal government workers, this email is an existential threat. That&#8217;s because, unlike the overwhelming majority of workers in this country, they — in many, though not all cases — don’t do anything, and to this point have not been expected to do anything. They shuffle papers around and wait until their pensions vest. This is something that&#8217;s considered impolite to say out loud, but everyone knows it&#8217;s true. In many cases, these federal jobs function like a kind of welfare that&#8217;s designed specifically to provide fake jobs to certain demographics. And that&#8217;s not some Right-wing conspiracy theory, by the way. Spend five minutes reading Left-wing media, and you&#8217;ll find that this statement isn&#8217;t even controversial.
For example, here&#8217;s a report this week from &#8220;NBC BLK&#8221;, which is NBC News&#8217; division that produces reports for black people. That&#8217;s something that exists, for some reason.
<div id="attachment_882975" style="width: 690px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-882975" class="size-full wp-image-882975" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/Gkff5J0WYAAVbRX.jpeg" alt="Screenshot: NBCBLK" width="680" height="565" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/Gkff5J0WYAAVbRX.jpeg 680w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/02/Gkff5J0WYAAVbRX-300x249.jpeg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px" />Screenshot: NBCBLK</div>
In other words, yes, these federal jobs don&#8217;t really benefit the taxpayers who are funding the salaries. Instead, they benefit certain demographics that, without these fake jobs, would not make anywhere near as much money. In their panic over Elon Musk, Democrats and the corporate press are finally admitting that.
As you&#8217;d expect, they&#8217;re going to fight like hell to keep that gravy train going. Some federal workers have just filed a lawsuit against the government because of the email asking them what they do all day. Yes, rather than answer an extremely basic question that demands a bare minimum of accountability, federal workers have already gone to court.
As Axios <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/02/24/musk-email-doge-lawsuit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reports</a>: 
<blockquote>Federal workers sue over &#8216;what did you do last week&#8217; email.&#8221; &#8230; Only federal agencies have the ability to hire and fire their workers, the lawsuit says. The Office of Personnel Management, the federal government&#8217;s HR office, which sent out the email over the weekend, does not have that authority, the suit alleges.</blockquote>
They&#8217;re specifically objecting to Elon Musk&#8217;s statement that, if workers don&#8217;t answer the email, it&#8217;ll be taken as a resignation. They&#8217;re arguing, in essence, that federal workers are entitled to ignore emails from their bosses asking them what they do all day. That is the extent of entitlement we&#8217;re dealing with here. And by the way, these workers are getting a second chance to answer the email. 
Now Musk has <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1894177129887404484" target="_blank" rel="noopener">clarified</a> that: 
<blockquote>Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.</blockquote>
So they get another chance. And it looks like, if they want to keep their jobs, these workers should take it. Already, several federal departments have told their employees that they need to reply to this email. The Department of Transportation has instructed workers to reply, for example. So has the Department of Health and Human Services, the Social Security Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and many others.
But there are signs that throughout the federal government, many workers will simply be incapable of answering the email. They legitimately cannot think of a single thing they did in the past week, apparently. And that&#8217;s probably terrible news for their careers. But it&#8217;s good news for us, because if nothing else, their televised meltdowns have been pretty entertaining. We&#8217;ll start with this indignant woman on CNN, who works at some unnamed federal agency. Watch:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="003 CNN worker outraged 1" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Rg2iDGCsqBI?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Evidently this woman has a lot of time to appear on CNN and claim she&#8217;s being &#8220;bullied&#8221; and &#8220;harassed,&#8221; and says she&#8217;s &#8220;absolutely infuriated.&#8221; But even after talking through this whole segment, she still never explains what she does all day. Instead she attacks her supervisors.
And of course she&#8217;s just one of many examples. On Reddit, federal workers are posting various plans for non-compliance and retaliation. They&#8217;re <a href="https://x.com/reddit_lies/status/1894109642659111242" target="_blank" rel="noopener">talking about</a> ways to spam the federal email system, for example. One <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/fednews/comments/1ivpc8z/national_security_risk_of_thousands_of_cleared/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">viral post</a> — which was <a href="https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1894205335042494776" target="_blank" rel="noopener">picked up</a> by CNN — reports that some federal workers may be considering leaking top-secret information to foreign adversaries. That&#8217;s how committed these people are to &#8220;public service.&#8221; They&#8217;re willing to commit treason when they lose their easy paychecks.
What&#8217;s especially funny about this whole meltdown is that, a few years ago, documents obtained by the investigative reporter Patrick Hauf found that 25% of federal workers &#8220;went a full month without even attempting to check their emails&#8221; during the COVID lockdowns. They just went dark. So really, you can make the case — as Musk has — that these emails are necessary just to make sure these workers are still alive, and still opening their laptops every now and then. But apparently that&#8217;s too much for these workers to deal with. They&#8217;re worried that, if they have to answer the email honestly, they might lose their jobs.
Thousands of &#8220;probationary&#8221; federal workers have already met that fate. In particular, terminated workers at the IRS are having some of the better meltdowns.
Here&#8217;s one of them, which was posted by NBC Philadelphia:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="004 FIRST IRS worker" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dKcm05j0W_Q?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Yes, this IRS worker stated that he was shocked to be fired because he actually showed up to work five days a week. That was his &#8220;tour of duty,&#8221; as he put it. These are people who legitimately think they&#8217;re storming the beaches of Normandy just by going into an office building on a regular schedule. They cannot imagine a scenario in which normal people don&#8217;t see them as war heroes because they leave home, commute to their job, occasionally conduct audits that make people&#8217;s lives a living hell, and then get to punch out at 3:30 in the afternoon. They have a schedule about as grueling as a third grader.
This seems to be something of a trend at the IRS. Here&#8217;s another recently terminated IRS worker:
<iframe loading="lazy" title="005 SECOND IRS worker" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/8MhNr2krZtY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Did you catch his &#8220;dream job&#8221;? He was a &#8220;tax-exempt officer dealing with nonprofit organizations and compliance.&#8221; That&#8217;s what he&#8217;s crying about on national television. Growing up, some people want to be astronauts, or race-car drivers. But not this guy. He dreamt of becoming a &#8220;tax-exempt officer dealing with nonprofit organizations and compliance.&#8221; That&#8217;s how he thought he&#8217;d &#8220;serve&#8221; the American people, as he sits there in sweatpants with his smoke detector beeping, which is so on the nose that I thought this video was a joke when I first saw it on X. But it isn’t. And then of course there&#8217;s the part where he explains that, in his understanding, the federal government &#8220;took care of its people,&#8221; unlike corporate America. In other words, he thought he&#8217;d scored a permanent job with no accountability whatsoever.
None of these people can hear themselves speaking. None of them understand what they&#8217;re acknowledging. In reality, they are making the case for their terminations better than Elon or Donald Trump possibly could. They&#8217;re all more or less stating that they don&#8217;t do anything.
But to be fair to the federal government, there are some exceptions. There are some employees — particularly employees in the federal intelligence agencies — who have been very busy in recent years. I&#8217;m talking specifically about the National Security Agency, or NSA. And we know they&#8217;ve been busy at the NSA because the City Journal just obtained chat logs from the agency&#8217;s top-secret internal messaging system.
As the City Journal has <a href="https://www.city-journal.org/article/national-security-agency-internal-chatroom-transgender-surgeries-polyamory">just reported</a>:
<blockquote>These logs, dating back two years, are lurid, featuring wide-ranging discussions of sex, kink, polyamory, and castration. One popular chat topic was male-to-female transgender surgery, which involves surgically removing the penis and turning it into an artificial vagina. &#8216;[M]ine is everything,&#8217; said one male who claimed to have had gender reconstruction surgery. &#8230; Another intelligence official boasted that genital surgery allowed him &#8216;to wear leggings or bikinis without having to wear a gaff under it. These employees discussed hair removal, estrogen injections, and the experience of sexual pleasure post-castration.&#8217;</blockquote>
It goes on from there.
So at least we know what the NSA has been up to. And if we&#8217;re being honest, we all know that this kind of thing was going on at many other federal agencies. If it was happening at the NSA — supposedly one of the more serious federal agencies — then it was happening all over. None of these federal workers ever thought they&#8217;d be held accountable for what they do all day. That&#8217;s because, for more than a century, thanks in part to various Supreme Court decisions, the idea of an ever-expanding, vast federal bureaucracy has been taken as a &#8220;given&#8221; in this country. No one thought it could ever be reined in. The federal government assumed more and more powers and &#8220;civil service protections&#8221; and so on.
But the Constitution doesn&#8217;t require any of this. Instead, the Constitution empowers the Executive to run the executive branch, which employs every single one of these perverts, narcissists, and incompetents. No judge, no lawsuit, no act of Congress, and certainly no CNN appearance can circumvent the Constitutional separation of powers that gives the executive branch that control. What we&#8217;re seeing now — which is something we should&#8217;ve seen a long time ago — is an executive branch that&#8217;s finally willing to exercise that control.

TOPSHOT-US-POLITICS-CPAC

Incompetent Federal Employees Panic When Asked What They Do All Day

Elon Musk

Matt Walsh

There was apparently some truth to President Donald Trump&#8217;s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-jokes-that-hell-send-90k-irs-workers-to-the-border" target="_blank" rel="noopener">quip</a> last month about sending Internal Revenue Service (IRS) workers to the southern U.S. border to help with deportation efforts.
Trump&#8217;s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to deputize some law-enforcement workers, including criminal investigators from the IRS, to help with immigration efforts, <a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-irs-officers-ice-deportations-ed87c4b5?mod=hp_lead_pos1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to documents obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
IRS criminal investigators often carry firearms and can make arrests. They currently investigate tax return preparer fraud, bankruptcy fraud, and identity theft schemes, among other crimes, <a href="https://www.irs.gov/compliance/criminal-investigation/program-and-emphasis-areas-for-irs-criminal-investigation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according</a> to the IRS website.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem asked Bessent to provide agents who would help investigate financial flows involving human-trafficking networks and businesses that employ illegal immigrants in a memo dated February 7, the Journal reported. The agents could help arrest, detain, and transport criminal illegals.
Last month, Trump appeared to joke that new IRS agents could be sent to help with deportation efforts at the border. In 2021, former President Joe Biden approved the hiring of nearly 87,000 IRS full-time employees by 2031.
“They hired, or tried to hire, 88,000 workers to go after you and we’re in the process of developing a plan to either terminate all of them, or maybe we’ll move them to the border,” Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-jokes-that-hell-send-90k-irs-workers-to-the-border" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> supporters gathered at the Circa Resort &amp; Casino in Las Vegas.
“I think we’re going to move them to the border where they are allowed to carry guns,&#8221; he added. &#8220;You know, they’re so strong on guns. But these people are allowed to carry guns. So we will probably move them to the border.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Trump suggests sending IRS agents to the border <a href="https://t.co/ljTsu78o1I">https://t.co/ljTsu78o1I</a> <a href="https://t.co/1HyeL9HCr7">pic.twitter.com/1HyeL9HCr7</a>
— New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1883531902323511376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
Trump promised Americans on the campaign trail that he would work to deport illegal immigrants, starting with those who&#8217;ve committed crimes in addition to illegally crossing the U.S. border.
The administration has moved quickly on that promise. During the first 18 days of Trump&#8217;s second presidential term, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) racked up 11,000 illegal immigrant arrests, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-jokes-that-hell-send-90k-irs-workers-to-the-border" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Daily Wire</a> reported.
The administration has also shut down the controversial Biden-era CBP One app, and DHS has moved to repeal limits on ICE agents, allowing the agents to more freely find and detain illegals.

Donald Trump Hosts Hispanic Roundtable In Nevada

Trump Wasn’t Joking: Some IRS Workers To Help With Deportation, Report Says

Border Crisis

border security

Immigration

Southern Border

President Donald Trump on Saturday floated the idea of sending nearly 90,000 new IRS agents to the southern border after pausing hiring at the agency.
Trump spoke at a rally at the Circa Resort &amp; Casino in Las Vegas over the weekend, and he joked that the tens of thousands of new IRS agents — hired under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — would be fired or reassigned to work at securing the border.
“They hired, or tried to hire, 88,000 workers to go after you and we’re in the process of developing a plan to either terminate all of them, or maybe we’ll move them to the border,” he told supporters
“I think we’re going to move them to the border where they are allowed to carry guns. You know, they’re so strong on guns. But these people are allowed to carry guns. So we will probably move them to the border,” he said to cheers from the crowd.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Trump suggests sending IRS agents to the border <a href="https://t.co/ljTsu78o1I">https://t.co/ljTsu78o1I</a> <a href="https://t.co/1HyeL9HCr7">pic.twitter.com/1HyeL9HCr7</a>
&mdash; New York Post (@nypost) <a href="https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1883531902323511376?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 26, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office freezing hiring for any “Federal civilian position that is vacant at noon on January 20, 2025,” for 90 days with some exceptions.
“This order does not apply to military personnel of the armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety. Moreover, nothing in this memorandum shall adversely impact the provision of Social Security, Medicare, or Veterans’ benefits. In addition, the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) may grant exemptions from this freeze where those exemptions are otherwise necessary,” the <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/hiring-freeze/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">order</a> states.
The Inflation Reduction Act granted about $80 billion in additional funding to the IRS, with most of those dollars, $46 billion, allocated toward enforcement, according to the <a href="https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-did-inflation-reduction-act-2022-affect-irss-budget" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Tax Policy Center</a>. Operations support received $25 billion, and most of the rest went toward modernizing systems and taxpayer services.
Republicans have promised to rescind the additional funding allocated to the IRS under the 2022 Biden-era legislation.

Trump Jokes That He’ll Send 90k IRS Workers To The Border

Trump Jokes That He'll Send 90k IRS Workers To The Border

Las Vegas

In a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/supply-side-trumponomics-part-one-drill-baby-drill" target="_blank" rel="noopener">previous article</a>, we looked at three policy areas ripe for large “positive supply shocks” and a rapid return of the U.S. economy to a high-growth, low-inflation situation: Energy production, tax cuts, and regulations.
First, Americans could see a significant reduction in energy costs under Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” plan designed to unleash American “energy dominance.” Next, we turn to phase two of Trump’s supply-side suite, the tried-and-true tool of widespread tax reductions.
<h3>Tax Cuts</h3>
To frame our discussion of supply-side tax cuts, let’s briefly review the “determinants of supply” — factors that can shift a product’s supply curve, summarized by the acronym TTEP#: Technology, Taxes, Expectations, Price of resources, # of producers.
The area where government can have a large and sudden impact should be screamingly obvious: taxes.
Yes, taxes are needed to fund essential government services. But economists recognize that taxes are costs. Higher sales taxes raise the cost of goods; higher income taxes raise the cost of earning a living; higher corporate taxes raise the cost of running a business. Obviously, reducing taxes on work and production (business and individual income taxes) will reduce the overall cost of producing goods, stimulating more work and production, and thus shifting supply curves to the right. Donald Trump understands this intuitively, which is why one of his signature agenda items in his first term was a large tax cut, particularly focused on business (corporate) taxation, via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA). 
Supply-side tax cuts have been tried and found amazingly successful on multiple occasions in U.S. history. Large income tax cuts in the 1920s (Mellon-Coolidge), 1960s (Kennedy-Johnson), 1980s (Reagan), and 2017 (Trump) led to corresponding economic booms and strong growth in personal income, output, and employment. 
The history and impact of these (and more) tax reforms was chronicled by the Godfather of modern supply-side economics, Arthur Laffer, with coauthors Brian Domitrovic and Jeanne Sinquefield, in their recent book, &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Taxes-Have-Consequences-Income-History/dp/1637585640/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1XSDHO3Q0YH3P&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.xu1XlM3jlOoD2hFrXGGZsA3AvTa81rKTZSeSwxTAc78SSYDcfj6Ce9LxRj8n7EbZDZ_ctwl3a4LOsayoPTsZz-DDK0xfkzSC-gVSLI6bJjYu1MUbZ0XSB1n3bXWIWKhn_L8hfc5x8rVboLmw2No0q89DoNqtN6Guk8NYmD5QJxdqDC6kGJmZkp-4oXjSEI-97PCv-bx--zTm5Ou3-ohksxmSaAzss6XInp315Q90hHQ.5ulo-v-Uewzzer1g7Nl3TGRiiyUVgo-iZVpy8pKxGJw&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=taxes+have+consequences&amp;qid=1731166728&amp;sprefix=taxes+have+conseq%2Caps%2C1723&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Taxes Have Consequences</a>.&#8221; As I noted <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11138-023-00613-3" target="_blank" rel="noopener">elsewhere</a>, the authors document no less than five distinct episodes of significant tax cutting, from Mellon’s aggressive 1920s rate cuts, to the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Art Laffer himself promoted as an advisor to the Trump Administration. Each tax cut generated an economic boom with above-trend GDP growth and (eventual) increases in federal income tax revenue. &#8220;Taxes Have Consequences&#8221; is a fact-based, unassailable chronicle of the power of tax rate reductions and tax code simplifications to supercharge economic growth. 
Trump’s tax agenda for 2025 has two big parts and several smaller ones. The TCJA cuts are scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025, so the priority will be making them permanent. The other big tax change Trump proposed on the campaign trail is a further significant reduction of the corporate income tax, from 21% down to a world-beating 15%, contingent on corporations promising to onshore production. Other measures of note include allowing 100% deduction of most business investment spending, and eliminating taxes on tips and Social Security benefits. 
Skeptics and doubters will, of course, bristle at further tax cuts. Leftists will whine about “tax cuts for the rich” and pooh-pooh their favorite bogeyman of “trickle down economics.” Even some wimpy conservatives will argue that most of the tax cut juice was already squeezed out in Trump’s first-term reforms, and that further tax cuts risk significant increases in the federal deficit and debt. Trump knows from experience, however, that tax cuts are still a powerful tool. After all, the top income tax rate right now is still 37%; Reagan’s reforms got us down to a top rate of just 28% by 1988, so there’s still room to cut. 
As a world-class businessman, Trump knows that pushing that corporate rate down even lower can turbocharge business formation and capital spending, the underlying factors driving growth in productivity, jobs, and wages. When Trump first entered office in 2017, the U.S. corporate income tax was among the highest in the world at 31%. Even with the TCJA reduction to 21%, the U.S. still taxes corporate profits at a higher rate than most European countries. There’s much more room to trim these taxes and improve America’s business climate.
<h3><a href="https://get.dailywire.com/gift-guide/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">CHECK OUT THE DAILY WIRE HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE</a></h3>
As for the revenue &amp; deficit impact: as Art Laffer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCk2-QVqCck&amp;pp=ygUQdGhlIGxhZmZlciBjdXJ2ZQ%3D%3D" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reminds us</a>, tax cuts have the potential to boost government revenue, as the “incentive to work/ earn more” effect can swamp the “government gets a smaller slice of my paycheck” effect. 
Trump has also made statements about possibly <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/26/trump-joe-rogan-election-tariffs-income-tax-replace.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">offsetting income tax revenues</a> with new tariffs, which is causing heartburn for some hardcore free-trade, libertarian economists. While I’m not a big fan of “protectionist” tariffs, I think it’s smart to view Trump’s threat of tariffs as both a hardball negotiating tactic and part of a bigger vision of pro-growth tax reform. Indeed, Trump has even made <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/24/us/politics/donald-trump-tax-policy.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recent statements</a> about eliminating the income tax altogether and replacing it with a pre-1913-style revenue tariff. Any free market economist worth his salt should see such a move as the biggest positive supply shock in world history. Income taxes are one of the most costly and economically distorting ways to raise revenue. Leftists pushing high tax rates have been open about using the income tax regime mainly as a <a href="https://youtu.be/gJimLZRC9N8?si=hshc1uPf457qzUUC">tool of social engineering and redistribution</a>, efficiency and incentives be damned. Reductions in compliance costs alone would justify swapping the income tax for tariffs. 
This kind of radical reform is far off, but Trump’s overall instincts are good here. Keep trimming away at taxes on the work and investment incomes of Americans, and reap the benefits of boosting incentives for production and capital formation. He did it before with 2017’s TCJA, and through a renewed focus on strategic tax cuts, he make America’s economy boom again.
* * *
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/supply-side-trumponomics-part-one-drill-baby-drill">RELATED: Supply-Side Trumponomics, Part One: ‘Drill, Baby, Drill’</a>
* * *
Tyler Watts is a professor of economics at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, Michigan.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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