Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance threw cold water on former President Donald Trump’s recent talk about eliminating the federal income tax.
Speaking to Meet the Press host Kristen Welker on Sunday, Vance called the idea an “aspirational goal” but admitted he didn’t think it was “realistic” with a Democratic-controlled Congress.
Vance instead pointed to the Trump campaign’s marquee tax policies, including eliminating taxes on tips and overtime pay. He declined to rule out the tax cut, but insisted that “right now, we’re working on cutting taxes on tips, cutting taxes on overtime.”
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However, Trump has been floating the idea more often, often in conjunction with raising tariffs on imported goods. Customs duties only provided about 2% of the government’s $4.4 trillion income in 2023, according to the Treasury Department. Individual income taxes were the largest source of income, bringing in about $2.1 trillion.
But Trump frequently praises the Gilded Age of the late 19th century, when the government was primarily funded through tariffs.
“In the old days, when we were smart, we were a smart country, in the 1890s—this is when the country was relatively the richest it ever was,” Trump told voters at a barber shop in the Bronx last week. “Now we have income tax and we have people that are dying—they are paying tax and they don’t have the money to pay their tax.”
Podcast host Joe Rogan brought the idea up again during his interview with the Republican nominee. During a discussion on tariffs, Rogan asked Trump if he was serious about eliminating income tax.
“Yeah, sure. But why not?” Trump said.
“Our country was the richest relatively in the 1880s and 1890s. A president who was assassinated named McKinley—he was the tariff king. He spoke beautifully of tariffs,” Trump said, referencing former President William McKinley, who was president until his assassination in 1901. “And then around in the early 1900s, they switched over stupidly to, frankly, an income tax.”
Speaking to Welker on Sunday, Vance also harkened back to the days when the budget was primarily funded through import duties.
“Look, in this country for a long time we funded the federal government primarily through tariffs—in other words, primarily through penalizing foreign corporations and foreign countries from taking advantage of our domestic markets.”
Representatives for Vance did not immediately return a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
