That someone is… yes, Donald Trumpwho says that «0% on income is closer«A crazy phrase, deliberately exaggerated, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. It is based on the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBB)the great tax reform that came into force in 2026 and that, without formally eliminating the income tax, begins to empty it below. Once again, on a personal note, I am dying of envy with what is happening on the other side of the Atlantic.
It is worth insisting on this, because that is the key. The OBB does not repeal the federal personal income tax, nor does it eliminate the progressive brackets, nor does it turn the United States into a tax haven from one day to the next. What it does is something much more subtle and, long termwhich is always much more powerful: it structurally reduces the basis on which the labor tax is applied.
At the moment, the federal tax system exempts personal income tax from this year on bribes and the overtimewhich have an important weight in the working classes. Furthermore, it significantly increases the deduction standard and reinforces tax benefits for certain groups, especially those over 65 years of age. The practical result is that a very relevant part of the workers is left out of the federal personal income tax, not because tax engineeringbut by design legal.
That is what Trump points out when he talks about 0% personal income tax. It does not refer to the disappearance of the tax in legal terms, but to a trend. The tax still exists, but increasingly will record less. Refuses to have a state financed by payroll taxes. That’s the address.
An unequivocal underlying message and contrary to that prevailing in Europe: each person’s salary should not be the pillar of the State, even though today it is almost half of the income in the United States. Trump wants release fiscally the salaries. He wants to seek fundraising in other places: commerce, dutyindirect taxes, economic growth.
The challenge is great, of course, because stating that tariffs replace personal income tax It’s a structural bombshell.
The comparison with Europe is once again uncomfortable, as we pointed out before. In the United States, even before the OBB, the federal personal income tax had lower marginal rates than in most European countries, high exempt minimums, and moderate effective pressure on broad sections of the population.
With the new law, that distance widens. In Spain, however, the personal income tax reaches marginal rates close to 50%con social contributions that act as a additional employment tax. The tax pressure on job is structurally high and growing, and the worker’s disposable income It narrows year after year.
The matter is doubly bloody. He original spirit of European integration It was going precisely in the direction that the United States is now exploring. The European Economic Community It was conceived as a large common market financed largely by indirect taxeswith VAT as a central figure, in exchange for going removing weight to direct taxes on work and capital. Less friction in production, more fiscal neutrality, for more growth.
What has happened since then is well known. Europe not only has not reduced direct taxes, but has reinforced them. High personal income tax, high contributions, increasing taxation on savings and capital, and also high VAT. All at the same time. The result is a fiscal pressure around the 40% of GDP and levels of public debt which are assumed to be permanent, greater than 100%. Does anyone remember the Convergence criteria?
The OBB, in this context, is not an American eccentricity. It’s an uncomfortable reminder that there are other paths. The zero personal income tax will not arrive tomorrow, it is not even clear if the de facto disappearance would be good. What is clear is that reducing taxes on labor in a sustained manner energizes mature economiesimprovement incentives and expands the base of medium term growth.
Trump has put that horizon on the table. With that tone of someone who feels that they should not waste time (the time they used or use Booty, Roig; sure that Amancio Ortega…), but also with a specific law that already changes the rules of the game.
Europe, meanwhile, remains installed in the opposite model: financing everything taxing payroll. Raising everywhere with the “fiscal consolidation«by flag. Choking us to regulation. Controlling the bizum. Designing the euro digital. Wanting to know everything about everyone. Is tyranny only in Venezuela?
Anyway… some differences explain why some economies grow and maintain the world leadershipwhile others resign themselves.