President Trump's Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Jesse Watters of Fox News last week that there's a goal within the administration of completely abolishing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
"His goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay," he said on "Jesse Watters Primetime."
Lutnick believes the economy will explode if the country utilizes tariffs without anybody having their benefits cut.
"As the president said, reciprocal tariffs, either you bring yours down or we're going to bring ours up," said Lutnick. "If we go to their level, it will earn us $700 billion a year to be equal to everybody else."
In January, President Trump announced a new "External Revenue Service" that would be tasked with collecting revenue from tariffs. It could also potentially replace the IRS.
Founder and CEO of Fluent Financial Mitch Kramer abolishing the IRS certainly isn't totally out of the question, but this seems to be more about Trump negotiating and framing something long-term.
"He has grandiose ideas and visions and says some pretty crazy things," Kramer said. "What he's talked about, which I think is more realistic, is the establishment of this 'External Revenue Service' to go after taxes via tariffs from our trading partners."
For decades, the trading partners of the United States have collected large amounts of money from Americans in tariffs. Trump wants it to be reciprocal.
"What he's trying to do is focus on getting more money collected from our trading partners than from the American public and he may also be envisioning a downsized IRS that's not as bureaucratic and inefficient," Kramer explained.
President Trump has also floated to some of his top officials the idea of getting rid of the federal income tax. Prior to 1913, when the federal income tax was created, the government was funded primarily from tariffs.
The thought of the IRS being abolished has gained a lot of attention in recent weeks too because America is in the middle of tax season. The possibility of it actually happening is unclear and a timeline of it being abolished may be unknown to everyone but Trump and his closest cabinet members too.
"He's doing so much right now, it just depends on where he can get the low-hanging fruit and build some momentum," said Kramer. "If you look at what's happened over the past month with the waste and our federal government paying various entities, I think a lot of Americans are very frustrated and angry and the IRS is a great place to be reformed."
A lot of people have outstanding tax bills. Would those bills go away if the IRS is scrapped? Kramer predicts that a lot of the IRS responsibilities would be rolled up into the Department of Treasury.
"I don't think those IRS bills are going to just disappear because that's unfair for the majority of Americans who do pay their taxes," Kramer added.
Kramer applauded President Trump and Elon Musk for their businessman-like approach to the federal government in locating the billions of dollars in wasteful spending and eliminating the fraud and unnecessary programs and positions.