Donald Trump Wants to Eliminate the Income Tax and Replace it With Tariffs.

After promising to eliminate taxes on tips, Social Security benefits and overtime pay, former President Donald Trump is taking aim at the largest levy of them all — the federal income tax.

Trump talked about his interest in ending the federal income tax in two high-profile interviews last October, harking back to the late 19th century, when the US relied on tariffs to fund federal spending. The President-Elect has vowed to broadly impose tariffs, arguing they can generate trillions of dollars in revenue.

Speaking with barbers in the Bronx, New York, in a segment aired on Fox News, Trump said, “There is a way, if what I’m planning comes out.”

“When we were a smart country, in the 1890s … this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was. It had all tariffs. It didn’t have an income tax,” Trump said after a barber asked whether it would be possible to jettison the federal income tax. “Now we have income taxes, and we have people that are dying. They’re paying tax, and they don’t have the money to pay the tax.”

Trump, who also floated the idea of ending the federal income tax in June, has not said whether he would eliminate federal corporate income and payroll taxes or just the individual income tax — which raises about half of the nearly $5 trillion in revenue that the federal government collects.

Imagine a world where income tax is a thing of the past, replaced by tariffs on imported goods. That’s the bold vision some have proposed, suggesting that instead of taxing our hard-earned wages, we could fund government services by taxing foreign products. Picture this: you buy a smartphone, and a portion of that price goes to support local infrastructure instead of the IRS.

The idea is to encourage Americans to buy domestic, boosting local jobs and industries. But it’s not without controversy. Critics argue that tariffs could lead to higher prices for consumers and retaliatory measures from other countries. Plus, how do we ensure that essential services are funded without the steady stream of income tax?

It’s a radical shift in economic policy that could reshape our financial landscape. Would it empower the average worker or create chaos in the market? The debate is fierce, and the stakes are high.

Eliminating the income tax could be a future “aspirational goal,” Trump senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters Saturday, noting that the former president’s top priorities would be extending the expiring provisions of his 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and implementing the targeted tax cuts that Trump has rolled out.