President Donald Trump said again Sunday night that he wants Americans to stop paying income taxes — and instead, use the money collected from tariffs (extra taxes on imported goods) to pay for the government.
Before boarding Air Force One after attending Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome, Trump said,
"We’re going to make a lot of money, and we’ll cut taxes for everyone. Maybe we’ll even get rid of income taxes completely because tariffs could cover everything."
Sounds great, right? No one likes paying income taxes.
But experts say this idea has huge problems.
Here’s why:
Right now, the government gets about $3 trillion a year from income taxes.
The U.S. also buys about $3 trillion worth of goods from other countries each year.
To replace income taxes, tariffs would have to be at least 100% — meaning everything we import would cost double.
Right now, the U.S. tariff rate is about 22.8%, already the highest among rich countries.
If tariffs went way higher, prices would skyrocket. People would buy less. Big companies are already complaining that prices are up and customers are spending less — on things like flights and food.
Simply put:
"The math just doesn’t work," says Erica York from the Tax Foundation.
Even with all the new tariffs Trump has already put in place, the government will only bring in about $170 billion — way less than what it needs.
And it gets worse:
If things from other countries get too expensive, companies might start making more stuff in the U.S., which sounds good — but if we import less, there would be even less money coming from tariffs.
Trump admitted this problem, saying that after America hit China with a 145% tariff, trade with China basically stopped — so no money is coming in.
Another big hurdle?
Trump can’t just cancel income taxes by himself.
Congress would have to pass a new law, and right now, there’s no bill for that, and not much support.
Also, income taxes mostly come from people, while corporate taxes (paid by companies) only make up about 6% of the government’s money. Trump also wants to lower corporate taxes, which would make the gap even bigger.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said earlier this year that Trump’s goal is simple:
"Get rid of the IRS and make other countries pay."
Trump admitted Sunday that it won’t happen overnight.
He said they would start by cutting taxes for people making less than $200,000 a year.
He also said some of the tariff money would have to go toward paying off the country’s debt.
"We have a lot of debt from over the years. We’ll use tariffs to handle that too," Trump said.
