What was promised
Trump began talking about this without putting anything into action. During a meeting with Republican members of Congress in DC in June 2024 he talked about an "all tariff policy" that would allow America to abolish the income tax at some point. Sources who spoke with CNBC who were present said this but did not elaborate any further on how. After the meeting he put out a statement on truth social that simply said "lots discussed, all positive".
Trump continued to bring this up in October 2024 while being interviewed on The Joe Rogan Experience. "Did you just float out the idea of getting rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs?" said Joe Rogan (via fortune). "We're serious about that?" Trump replied with "Yeah, sure, but why not?". He went onto praise President McKinley as being the "tariff king".
Trump never specified what this would mean. Whether he was going to completely abolish the income tax or as he would say later on "substantially reduce" it. So the largely/completely fits this description.
What's happened since
2025: tariffs go up. Trump imposed tariffs on the majority of goods that were imported into America. He tweeted that "When Tariffs cut in, many people's Income Taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated. Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year". He went on to add "THE EXTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE IS HAPPENING!!!"
There has been an increase in revenue from tariffs. The Congressional Budget Office stated that tariffs have collected $195 billion in revenue in the fiscal year of 2025 (ending in September). This is a 153% increase compared to the previous year. However the income tax made $2,665 billion in revenue which is 14 times as much. Trump continued to talk about how the income tax can be cut "substantially" or not used at all due to tariff revenue towards the end of 2025. Here's some facts from politifact on the matter. From Douglas Holtz-Eakin who is from American Action Forum (center right group) stated that tariff rates would need to be "incredibly high — well over 60%" in order for tariff revenue to be similar to that of the income tax. Taxpayers for common sense also commented saying "It is not remotely possible that tariffs could be used to eliminate the income tax."
February 2026: the Supreme Court. On February 20th they decided that Trump cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to enforce these tariffs. The supreme court voted 6-3 to deny him the ability to use this law to apply tariffs. He then applied a 10% tariff to all countries (with some exceptions) using another law that only allows for 150 days unless congress approves. Once that expired on July 24th more tariffs were put in place on most countries importing from America at a rate of 10% or 12.5%. These are from 60 different countries using yet another law known as section 301.
Four days later he once again mentioned that tariffs would help lower the income tax in his state of the union speech. He stated that "As time goes by, I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love." As previously mentioned by economists (via Fortune) most of the tariffs are passed on to American consumers.
The 2026 financial year. Due to the ruling made by the supreme court money had to be refunded. It is estimated that $130 billion was refunded to companies that were affected by the tariffs the court ruled against. Which lowered tariff revenue to $172 billion (down 11% from last year). If you take away the refunds tariff revenue for the fiscal year was around $300 billion. The income tax made an estimated $2,844 billion in revenue for the year. An increase of 7% from last year. Which is over 16 times what tariffs made after refunds were issued (or 9x if you don't take into account the refunds).
I was not able to find any bill being worked on in congress that would implement this change. There is one bill currently in congress that would remove the income tax and replace it with a sales tax nationally. It was introduced in January of 2025 and has been sent to a committee.
Current status
Stalled. While tariff revenue has gone up significantly under trump's presidency he continues to claim that they will "substantially replace" the income tax one day. We have not found any changes to the income tax that have been made or will be made that would be funded by tariffs. As shown above the income tax makes significantly more than tariff revenue. With the supreme court striking down the emergency tariffs (more tariffs have been put in place since) there is nothing happening at the moment to replace the income tax with tariffs as of late October 2026.
Opinion
Like all of the tariff talk, this one has me stumped.
Trump's tariffs are taxes that Americans pay, either businesses or individuals. A tariff is an import tax paid by the entity that's doing the importing. And yet, somehow, Trump continues to push the idea that it's the other country, the foreign company, that's paying the import duty.
Either this "elite businessman" genuinely doesn't know how tariffs work, or he's relying on people not being smart enough to know how tariffs work.
The promised $2000 tariff refund check is a whole other story though.