Billionaire Tax Club

What A Day

Crooked Media

News, Daily News

4.6 • 12K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2025

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Tax season is upon us, with millions of Americans preparing to file lots of complicated paperwork with the Internal Revenue Service to figure out how much they owe the federal government. Potentially complicating things this year, though, is the Trump administration's decision to fire thousands of IRS workers, just as all that complicated paperwork starts rolling in. Economist Lindsay Owens, executive director of the economic policy think tank Groundwork Collaborative, explains what tax cuts we can expect from Republicans' forthcoming legislation. And in headlines: A pair of federal agencies directed government departments to prepare for mass layoffs, the U.S. records its first death from measles in a decade, and Jeff Bezos says The Washington Post's op-ed page will focus on 'personal liberties and free markets.'

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's Thursday, February 27th.
0:04.5	I'm Jane Koston, and this is Water Day, the show that is personally relieved, that Elon Musk is on top of critical issues, even if tiny little mistakes get made.
0:14.3	One of the things we accidentally canceled very briefly was Ebola, Ebola prevention.
0:18.7	I think we will want Ebola prevention.
0:20.8	A minor oopsie. Homomsom among us, right?
0:28.4	On today's show, the Trump administration tells federal agencies to prepare to cut more staff.
0:33.9	And Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. comments on the measles outbreak after the death of a child in Texas.
0:39.1	Spoiler alert, his comments don't help.
0:41.7	But let's start with everyone's favorite subject.
0:45.2	Taxes!
0:46.6	Okay, that is basically no one's favorite subject.
0:50.3	If you have to pay income tax, you are probably not very excited about it.
0:55.3	No wonder President Donald Trump thinks that we should just not have an income tax anymore. Here he is making that
1:00.9	case at a conference in January. Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich foreign nations, we should be
1:07.0	tariffing and taxing for foreign nations to enrich our citizens.
1:11.7	Okay. First, some quick math.
1:14.3	Americans pay between $2 and $3 trillion in income tax every year.
1:18.8	According to CNN, Americans buy about $3 trillion worth of imported goods every year.
1:24.0	So you would need to put 100% tariffs on imports in order to even start making up
1:29.3	for the loss caused by no income tax. And then you'd need to remember that tariffs drive up prices,
1:35.1	and high prices drive down demand, which means that fewer people, buy stuff that costs more.
1:40.4	So they'd have to raise tariffs even more. You can see where all this goes. High prices, low demand,
	...

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