Brian Armstrong, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase (Nasdaq: COIN), has proposed a sweeping change to the U.S. tax system, calling for the elimination of individual income taxes and a shift of the tax reporting burden to businesses. He shared his ideas on social media platform X:
Honestly, getting rid of individual income tax entirely would be ideal, shifting tax reporting burden to businesses instead. Try to generate equivalent revenue via a sales tax, or on business income, etc.
Armstrong argued that a simplified system could reduce stress for millions of Americans, making taxes easier to manage while maintaining essential government revenue.
The Coinbase CEO also criticized the immense complexity of the current tax code, which spans approximately 150,000 pages and is often incomprehensible even to experts. He stated: “It’s kind of crazy that we ask every adult in the U.S. to figure out how to pay their taxes – the tax code is ~150k pages long and no single person fully understands it. Would be better to offload this burden to the 10k largest companies, instead of asking 200m adults to figure out a complex accounting task annually.”
His remarks align with concerns from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which highlighted on X that the U.S. tax code has grown from fewer than 1.5 million words in 1955 to over 16 million words today. This complexity requires Americans to collectively spend 6.5 billion hours each year preparing and filing their taxes. President-elect Donald Trump announced the formation of DOGE last week, appointing Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy as co-leaders. DOGE aims to streamline federal operations and reduce wasteful spending.
Armstrong’s suggestion has sparked debate, with some praising its potential to simplify tax compliance and others questioning its implications for fairness and economic equity. Nonetheless, the growing frustration with the U.S. tax system underscores the urgency of addressing its inefficiencies.