Most Americans don’t have warm feelings for the federal government’s tax collection agency. A Pew Research Center poll found that more than half of the country has an unfavorable opinion of the Internal Revenue Service. Only 42% have a favorable opinion.
Donald Trump needs to capitalize on this discontent, and at the same time seize the momentum that Javier Milei created when he shut down Argentina’s tax bureau.
According to the Pew Research Center, the IRS “was among the least popular” of the 16 federal agencies and departments it asked Americans about in a 2023 survey. While more Democrats held a favorable opinion of the IRS (53%) than unfavorable (40%), it turns out that even though “Democrats offer much more positive opinions than Republicans when it comes to most of the federal agencies” – no surprise there, Democrats are happiest when the boot of the state is crushing citizens’ necks – “the IRS ranks near the bottom of their list.”
Meanwhile, Argentina’s Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos (AFIP), will “cease to exist” under the administration of free-market President Milei.
“Throughout its existence, this agency has functioned as a political cash box and, as we all know, many Argentines have been subjected to absolutely immoral persecutions,” says Milei’s office. “No state bureaucrat should be delegated the power to tell an Argentinean what to do with his property.”
AFIP will be replaced by “a new ‘simplified, agency, cutting a third of jobs in the process,” the Buenos Aires Times reports.
Americans rightly fear the IRS. They’re terrified of audits, scared that they will have their property seized, lose sleep over the possibility they made an honest mistake that will land them in deep trouble, outraged by the invasion of their privacy, and frightened by the abuse that the agency has been known to dish out to taxpayers.
By pledging to dissolve the IRS, Trump would gain the support of the Republican, conservative, libertarian, and independent voters who might still be fence-sitting, and likely that of a significant portion of the 40% of Democrats who have an unfavorable opinion of the IRS. Just as a progressive is a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet, a Democratic voter is a conservative or independent who hasn’t been audited yet.
At the same time, Trump needs to remind voters that the Biden-Harris administration Inflation Reduction Act adds thousands of shock troops to the IRS payroll, increases its budget by 69% through 2031, and boosts its overall workforce by 87,000.
While he’s at it, Trump should also promise to eliminate the Education Department, which Pew found to be almost as unpopular as the IRS, as well as the Energy Department, a bureaucracy that has done more to cut energy production than to boost it.
Reform, a word that is frivolously tossed around in Washington, of dysfunctional and unnecessary departments and agencies won’t get the job done. Termination has to be the objective.
Issues & Insights was founded by seasoned journalists of the IBD Editorials page. Our mission is to provide timely, fact-based reporting and deeply informed analysis on the news of the day – without fear or favor.
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