As the 2024 campaign neared its send, candidate Donald Trump began promising that, if elected, he would support the elimination of income taxes. Shortly after he was sworn in, Trump then began saying he planned to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. The Trump team claimed in each case that it could raise enough tax revenue from tariffs to replace tax revenue from income taxes.
By March, however, Trump began backtracking, and his administration announced that the new goal was to eliminate income taxes for people making under $150,000 per year.
That last development on its own tells us that the IRS isn’t going away. If people making more than $150,000 are still going to pay income tax, then there will still be an IRS to which we’ll need to send tax returns to prove we’re not making more than $150,000.Raico, Ralph
But even if we ignore that problem, there are at least two other reasons why we can be sure the IRS isn’t going anywhere. The first way we know this is from the fact that the Trump administration is only talking about “abolishing” the progressive individual income tax. Administration mouthpieces have said nothing at all about getting rid of the income taxes known as “payroll taxes” that every wage earner pays.
The second way we know that the IRS isn’t going away is that taxes on imports—i.e., tariffs—simply aren’t going to bring in enough revenue to keep funding all the popular spending programs that Trump clearly has no interest in cutting.
Hellbound and Down 