Trump Screwed Over His Appointees And Stuck Them With Huge Tax Bills

Donald Trump wanted to give his political appointees a major gift before leaving office, but instead he ended up sticking them with a massive tax bill that has left his friends feeling angry. The tax cut was a payroll tax cut that was really just a deferment of the payments, but Trump had promised that he would make it permanent. But that all depended on him winning reelection, which didn't happen. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what happened.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Shortly before last year's election, Donald Trump knew that he needed a boost. So he signed an executive order, creating a payroll tax cut, a temporary payroll tax cut. Now this was actually an optional tax cut for most employers here in the United States. It would have deferred the 12 and a half percent payroll tax from paychecks, but it was gonna have to be paid back once the tax cut expired, which was only, you know, just a couple of months. But Trump sold it as a way to help stimulate the economy. What he was really doing was he was bribing people to vote for him with this very temporary tax cut that was going to, you know, expire shortly after the election. And again, most corporations opted out of it. They said, no, this is a mistake. Our employees are going to get off when they have to pay this money back.

Most of them don't have the means to do it. So we're opting out. But for federal employees, it was not optional. They got it, whether they wanted it or not. And now they're being stuck with very large tax bills, you know, $1500, $2,000, that they have to repay within the next 30 days, or else they're going to face the, you know, full force of the US government coming to collect money from them. And that's not a very pleasant experience. But the people who got screwed most out of this are Trump's political appointees. The people that he put in the federal government, not necessarily the big wigs, you know, we're not talking about people like Ben Carson or Betsy DeVos, or, you know, any of the other folks like that. We're talking about just the average work-a-day people that the Trump administration put in place who had to leave once the Trump administration ended.

The people who were regular employees that are still employed there, they're having the taxes just come out of their current paycheck. So they're losing money on that end, but they're not having to pay it all in one big lump sum payment. However, Trump's political appointees got screwed and they are having to make one big payment and they're rightfully off. But what's weird is that they're off at Joe Biden. I mean, of course, right? They're always off at Joe Biden. Everything is Biden's fault, whether it is, or it isn't because they're mad at Biden because he didn't forgive the payroll tax cut, which Trump said multiple times, this whole tax is probably going to be forgiven. So you're never going to have to pay it back. But he forgot one very important thing, that all pretty much hinged on whether or not he was going to win the presidential election.

He didn't win and therefore Congress didn't feel the need to appeal he's him in any way. And didn't forgive the back taxes owed by these individuals. So it is what it is. Donald Trump attempted to bribe people into voting for him. Most corporations were, believe it or not, smart enough to not fall for this con. But the federal employees had no choice and now they're getting screwed. And like always, rather than blaming the actual guy that did this, they're blaming Biden for not pushing for forgiveness of these back taxes. That ladies and gentlemen is partisanship 101 in the United States and I am sure that Trump is laughing about this right now, even though his people are the ones who got screwed over by him, Biden's the one that has to take the fall for it.