If there’s one thing Trump and his billionaire backers hate more than democracy, it’s paying taxes. The news that Trump and Musk are laying off 6,700 IRS employees—undercutting the Biden administration’s effort to crack down on wealthy tax cheats— isn’t just some routine budget cut. It’s part of a long-running, deliberate campaign by the ultra-rich to gut the agency responsible for making them pay their fair share.
America wasn’t always funded by an income tax. Before the 20th century, the federal government relied primarily on tariffs and excise taxes— regressive systems that hit working people harder than the rich. That changed in 1913 with the ratification of the 16th Amendment, which established the federal income tax and created the foundation of modern public investment. At its core, progressive taxation was designed to ensure that those who benefit most from the economy contribute proportionally to the society that makes their wealth possible.
The conservative opposition to this was immediate and vicious. The rich and powerful raged against the very idea of a progressive tax, with business moguls and their political allies calling it “class warfare” and “socialism”— language eerily similar to what we hear today. When FDR raised top marginal tax rates to 94% during World War II to fund the war effort and ensure shared sacrifice, the wealthy fought tooth and nail to roll it back. When Reagan slashed the top tax rate from 70% to 28% in the 1980s, he didn’t just enrich the elite— he fueled the explosion of wealth inequality we’re still suffering from now. Fast forward to today, and the war against taxation is reaching its most extreme phase yet. Trump, Elon Musk and the rest of the billionaire class don’t just want lower taxes. They want to dismantle the entire system that makes them possible.
Trump has openly fantasized about abolishing the IRS altogether, floating the idea of replacing income taxes with tariffs and getting foreign governments to foot the bill. This isn’t just economic illiteracy— although it certainly is that— it’s an open declaration that the wealthy believe taxation should be for other people. Meanwhile, Elon Musk, a man whose wealth is so grotesque it’s measured in GDP-sized increments, has spent years railing against taxes and moving his assets around to avoid them. In 2018, he paid zero federal income tax. Zero. For a parasite with a net worth of around $400 billion, how is that not a firing squad offense? (Sure have a fair trial first, but let’s get that last cigarette and blind fold ready half an hour or 45 minutes after it starts.)
Billionaires aren’t content with just avoiding taxes; they want to dismantle the very infrastructure that could hold them accountable. They’ve spent decades defunding the IRS, slashing its enforcement budget, and ensuring that audits disproportionately target the middle class instead of corporate tax dodgers. Biden’s plan to bolster IRS enforcement was a modest attempt to correct this— to make sure billionaires, hedge fund managers, and massive corporations couldn’t just evade taxes with impunity. But Trump and the GOP made gutting it a top priority. And now, they’re getting their wish. Trump’s newly-confirmed Commerce Secretary, crooked billionaire Howard Lutnick was talking on Fox a couple of nights ago about scrapping the IRS entirely and replacing it with an “external revenue service.” (Worth keeping in the back of your mind: not one Republican opposed Lutnick’s confirmation.)
This is the culmination of the right-wing, libertarian billionaire dream: an America where the rich live in an untouchable bubble, where public goods crumble, and where the only people held accountable are those too poor to fight back. They don’t just want to evade taxes— they want to rig the system permanently so they never have to worry about contributing to the society they exploit.
The fundamental question here is: Who runs the country? A democratically elected government accountable to the people? Or a cabal of oligarchs and kleptocrats, using their wealth to dismantle any system that might inconvenience them, even if just in theory? Because make no mistake— what Trump, Musk, and their billionaire allies are doing isn’t just about taxes. It’s about power. And unless they’re stopped, the rest of us are going to be left paying their bills forever.
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