As Congress negotiates the critical extension of the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), it’s been reported that some have begun to consider raising taxes on the wealthy to provide offsets for other tax-cut and spending priorities. One proposal under consideration would raise the tax rate paid by those earning at least $1 million per year to 40 percent. It’s disappointing to see tax increases being considered for inclusion in a bill that’s about lowering Americans’ tax burdens. There is nothing economically sound about adding new wrinkles to the tax code, and there is nothing just about raising taxes on affluent Americans because Congress might want to avoid making painful budget cuts. In any negotiation, there are many ideas thrown around, and TPA hopes that this millionaire tax will be quickly dismissed as an inviable possibility in the final legislative package. The federal government’s deficit problem is a spending problem, not a revenue problem. Federal outlays keep growing, pushed ever upwards by an unreformed entitlement state and out-of-control interest payments on the debt. No amount of new taxation can solve this problem. Instead, Congress must take a hard look at its spending priorities, including responsible, yet assertive, reform of Social Security and Medicare.

Back to the Future With Antitrust

Back to the Future is a fun movie that makes you think about the implications of time travel. This week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) went back to the future and started its trial against Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp which were approved more than 10 years ago.  In the government’s telling, these purchases allowed Meta illegally to monopolize its market. Regulators will seek a judgment compelling Meta to relinquish the two platforms. Unfortunately for the government, the FTC’s case has little mooring to sound law or economics. The government declined — correctly — to challenge either merger when the transactions occurred in the 2010s; yet as cultural-political incentives developed in the years following, politicians of both parties became tantalized by the prospect of warring with Big Tech (albeit the parties did so for different reasons). Antitrust — which is, in its proper conception, a narrow economic tool — has become a weapon of political and cultural strife.

Consider the instructive history of Instagram. When Meta acquired it, regulators did not act because Instagram was small, and the deal did not appear to present the sorts of problems against which antitrust regulators act. “At the time, basically no one worried about it from an antitrust perspective and many pundits lambasted the purchase as a poor business decision,” scholars from the International Center for Law & Economics report. “It is only in retrospect that people have started to see it as the merger that got away.” Indeed, while Instagram would likely have gained users absent its acquisition by Meta, the resources, innovation, and technical improvements the new parent company provided propelled the smaller platform to become one of the premier social media sites of modern times. In 2012, Instagram has a small user base; today, its count of monthly active users has surpassed two billion. Far from anticompetitive, this growth gave consumers a top-notch product and fostered new competition as rivals raced to keep abreast of a newly formidable challenger.  This should be celebrated, not scorned.

To portray Meta’s position as monopolistic, the FTC has contorted market definitions to overstate its market share. According to the government, Meta’s Facebook and Instagram compete only with Snapchat and MeWe, holding up to roughly 85 percent of the market share between them. However, accounting for competition from just TikTok and YouTube — and excluding the competition from its other rivals, such as X, Reddit, and Pinterest — Meta’s share shrinks to less than 30 percent. In addition to common sense — not to mention the obvious similarity of products such as Instagram’s Reels, YouTube’s Shorts, and TikTok video offerings — data confirms the notion that Meta’s platforms compete with a broader array of competitors than the FTC avers. For example, when TikTok became temporarily unavailable earlier this year, the use of Facebook and Instagram spiked.

The FTC’s attempt to dismember Meta’s parts through divestiture should provoke further discomfort. The attempt to confiscate large portions of a business’s assets — for the sole crime of that business’s wild success in serving its customers — a decade or more after their acquisition amounts to a confiscation of property, antithetical to a system predicated on robust property rights. From this precedent comes no limiting principle to bar enforcers from going back two decades, or three, or more, to reverse sound regulatory determinations and reopen cases better left closed. No regulatory decision could be considered settled with finality, and uncertainty would plague any company engaged in mergers and acquisitions — any company large enough to garner regulators’ attention, that is. Indeed, the logic of the FTC’s case threatens any company fulfills a market demand too well. This week, Meta faces the charge that it has succeeded too thoroughly in marketing useful and entertaining communications services; consumers enjoy its products too much, and too many choose to use them in preference to those of competitors. This assumption that “Big is Bad” — that market dominance constitutes per se evidence of anticompetitive conduct — cannot be cabined within the realm of mergers and acquisitions. Instead, as recent experience has shown, the advocates of “Big is Bad” wish to cripple the business operations of many of America’s best companies, a particularly dangerous impulse given its myopic obsession with the tech industry.

“Big is Bad” was the battle cry of the Biden administration’s antitrust agenda, which characterized itself by the extension of enforcement deep into new portions of the economy. The Trump administration should reject such backdoor central planning and fulfill its mandate to leave the disastrous Biden age in the dustbin of history, where it belongs.

Smoke Free Surge Stalled by Feds

The U.S. nicotine market is undergoing a historic shift — one that should be celebrated as a major public health breakthrough. A new Goldman Sachs report forecasts that smoke-free nicotine products will surpass cigarettes in consumption by 2025 and come close to matching them in revenue and profit by 2035. To be clear, this shift isn’t the result of government policy. It’s happening because consumers are making better choices. Yet federal regulators appear determined to stand in the way. The data couldn’t be clearer. Millions of smokers are abandoning cigarettes for reduced-risk products like vaping devices, nicotine pouches, and heated tobacco. Cigarette sales are plummeting — from 12.9 billion packs in 2016 to a projected 2.7 billion by 2035. This trend should give public health agencies a reason to cheer. Instead, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is dragging its feet, imposing policies that make it harder — not easier — for adult smokers to switch to safer alternatives. The FDA’s obstruction risks slowing one of the most promising developments in decades for reducing smoking-related deaths.

Despite the flood of misinformation, the market is succeeding where decades of public health campaigns have failed: It’s making cigarettes obsolete. Given the choice, consumers are ditching smoke for safer alternatives that deliver nicotine without combustion’s deadly byproducts. This isn’t just progress — it’s a landmark victory for harm reduction. The free market deserves credit for this shift. While government anti-smoking efforts have leaned heavily on punitive tactics — higher taxes, grotesque warning labels, and outright bans — real declines in smoking have come where reduced-risk nicotine products are legal and accessible. In the United States, this transformation is unfolding not because of regulators, but in spite of them. At the heart of the problem lies the FDA’s Pre-Market Tobacco Application process. Supposedly designed to vet new nicotine products, the PMTA system has become a bureaucratic bottleneck. It’s opaque, glacial, and unreasonably strict. The result? A legal market riddled with uncertainty — and an illegal one thriving in its place.Today, more than 60% of e-vapor sales come from illicit, unregulated products. That’s not because consumers prefer them. It’s because the FDA has made it nearly impossible for legitimate companies to get reduced-risk products approved and onto shelves. The agency has created a regulatory vacuum — and the black market has filled it. The dysfunction doesn’t stop with vaping. Heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches — both widely recognized abroad as effective harm reduction tools — face the same bureaucratic purgatory. Meanwhile, traditional cigarettes remain widely available and profitable. If public health were truly the FDA’s goal, it would fast-track reduced-risk alternatives, not prop up the very products causing the most harm.

Regulatory inertia risks stifling competition in the industry. Cigarettes still generate 66% of industry revenue and 70% of profits. The companies leading the charge toward a smoke-free future — those that don’t sell cigarettes — face the stiffest regulatory headwinds. In effect, the government is shielding the cigarette market rather than accelerating its collapse. The FDA should fast-track approvals for products with significantly lower health risks than cigarettes. Doing so would give consumers legal access to safer options while shrinking the black market. The public also deserves the truth. Nicotine may be addictive, but it isn’t what causes cancer, heart disease, or emphysema. The culprit is combustion. And the longer that confusion persists, the more smokers the FDA leaves behind. Federal regulators should stop protecting the tobacco industry and start supporting companies that are moving the U.S. away from combustible cigarettes. That means giving independent vape makers and harm-reduction innovators a fighting chance, instead of letting Big Tobacco tighten its grip through regulatory capture. Regulation should make cigarettes less appealing — not safer alternatives harder to get. Risk-proportionate rules would prioritize public health by nudging smokers toward lower-risk products, not driving them into the black market or back to Marlboro.

Cigarettes are dying. The FDA can either help bury them or keep dragging out their final act. The question is whether public health officials care more about optics or outcomes. The market has already chosen. It’s time for the government to catch up.

Blogs:

Monday: Ahead of Tax Day, TPA Encourages Congress to Extend the TCJA and End IRS Direct File and Conservatives Should Encourage Private Investment in Housing, Not Condemn It

Tuesday: Why Conservatives are Right to Push for Rescheduling Cannabis

Wednesday: Taxpayer Watchdog Group Slams Groundless FTC Case Against Meta

Thursday: Taxpayer Watchdog Warns Against Abandoning Sound Tax Principles

Media:

April 10, 2025: WBFF Fox45 Baltimore (Baltimore, Md.) quoted TPA in their article, "Waste Watch: Is Congress' budget resolution sound economic policy?."

April 10, 2025: WBFF Fox45 Baltimore (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their segment on the budget resolution and extending the TCJA.

April 10, 2025: Federal Newswire ran TPA's op-ed, "Carr's Push for Deregulation Aims to Expand Broadband Access."

April 10, 2025: Independent Institute ran TPA's op-ed, "One Simple Trick to Nixing Needless Federal Rules."

April 10, 2025: YellowHammer News (Birmingham, Ala.) ran TPA’s op-ed, "Smart tax policy would incentivize Alabamians who smoke to quit."

April 10, 2025: Townhall ran TPA's op-ed, "IRS Overzealous Auditing Hurts Poor Families."

April 11, 2025: Real Talk with Riggin (KZIM – Cape Giradeau, Mo.) interviewed me about Tax Day.

April 11, 2025: Yahoo!News ran TPA’s op-ed, "Conservatives Should Encourage Private Investment in Housing, Not Condemn It."

April 11, 2025: RealClear Markets ran TPA's op-ed, "This Tax Day, Congress Should Avoid Tax Gimmicks."

April 11, 2025: RealClear Policy ran TPA’s op-ed, "Conservatives Should Encourage Private Investment in Housing, Not Condemn It."

April 11, 2025: The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Md.) quoted TPA in their article, "Energy giants dominate Md. Lobbying."

April 11, 2025: The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore, Md.) mentioned TPA in their article, "Wind offers clean, affordable energy solutions”

April 11, 2025: Communications Daily (Washington, D.C.) mentioned TPA in their article, "Spalter Urges 'Spring Cleaning' of FCC Rules."

April 12, 2025: The Herald (New Britain, Conn.) ran TPA's op-ed, "Tax hikes loom why Congress must act to save the TCJA."

April 12, 2025: KLIN-AM Radio (Lincoln, Neb.) interviewed TPA Research Director David McGarry on the issue of tariffs.

April 12, 2025: Yahoo!News mentioned TPA in their article, "Neither Trump Nor The A.P. Controls Our Words."

April 12, 2025: The Chronicle (Willimantic, Conn.) ran TPA's op-ed, "Tax hikes loom - why Congress must act to save the TCJA."

April 12, 2025: The Blaze ran TPA's op-ed, "Smoke-free surge stalled by feds clinging to old habits."

April 13, 2025: WSBA-AM Radio (Harrisburg, Pa.) interviewed TPA Research Director David McGarry on the issue of tax rates.

April 13, 2025: WRCN-FM Radio (New York, N.Y.) interviewed TPA Research Director David McGarry to speak on tariffs and taxation.

April 14, 2025: The Well News ran TPA’s op-ed, "Junk Science Should Be Kept Out of US Courtrooms."

April 14, 2025: WBFF Fox45 Baltimore (Baltimore, MD) mentioned me in their article, "Waste Watch: Is 'IRS Direct File' worth keeping around and operational?."

April 14, 2025: KNUS/CBS Radio (Denver, Col.) interviewed me for their segment on taxes. 

April 14, 2025: WBFF Fox45 Baltimore (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their segment on IRS Direct File.

April 14, 2025: Lakeland Broadcasting (Willmar, Minn.) mentioned TPA in their article, "Willmar Connect bid authorization moved to May...opposition group launches social media blitz."

April 15, 2025: The Marc Cox Morning Show (Fox News Radio Network) interviewed TPA Research Director David McGarry for their segment on Tax Day.

April 15, 2025: The Jeff and Bill Show (KNUS Denver) interviewed TPA Research Director David McGarry for their segment on Tax Day

April 15, 2025: Memphis Morning News (WKIM) interviewed TPA Research Director David McGarry for their segment on Tax Day.

April 15, 2025: Benton Foundation mentioned TPA in their piece, "Taxpayers Protection Alliance Comments to the FCC In Re: Delete, Delete, Delete."

April 15, 2025: I appeared WBOB Radio (Jacksonville, Fa.) to talk about regulations and the national debt.

April 15, 2025: Targeted News Service mentioned TPA in their article, "Steube Introduces Family Business Legacy Act."

April 16, 2025: Townhall ran TPA's op-ed, "The FTC’s Case Misguided Case Against Meta."

April 16, 2025: Florida Daily (Fleming Island, Fla.) quoted me in their article, "Details How the Federal Government Wasted Billions Spent on Office Furniture."

April 16, 2025: Florida Daily (Fleming Island, Fla.) ran TPA's op-ed, "How USPS Fees Are Making Eggs Even More Expensive."

April 16, 2025: WBFF Fox45 Baltimore (Baltimore, Md.) quoted me in their segment on IRS audits.

April 16, 2025: Fox9 Minnesota and 22 other outlets quoted me in their article, "Report: Trump to end IRS Direct File program for free tax filing."

April 16, 2025: The Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Ill.) and 94 other outlets quoted me in their article, "Trump admin plans to end the IRS' free tax filing program, AP sources say."

April 16, 2025: MSN News quoted me in their article, "Trump admin plans to end the IRS' free tax filing program, AP sources say."

April 16, 2025: The Great Bend Post (Great Bend, Kansas) and three other outlets mentioned TPA in their article, "Trump administration to end free tax filing program."

April 16, 2025: Fortune mentioned TPA in their article, "Elon Musk’s DOGE reportedly wants to kill the IRS tool that makes filing free for American taxpayers."

April 16, 2025: NBC News quoted TPA in their article, "Trump administration plans to end the IRS Direct File program for free tax filing, sources say."

April 17, 2025: iHeart Radio and 71 other outlets quoted me in their article, "IRS To Eliminate Free Direct Tax Filing Program: Report."

April 17, 2025: The Accountant Online (United Kingdom) mentioned TPA in their article, "Trump administration plans to scrap IRS Direct File programme."

April 17, 2025: Michigan Live (Detroit, Mich.) mentioned TPA in their article, "Trump planning to end free tax filing service that started under Biden."

April 17, 2025: Inkl.com (Australia) mentioned TPA in their article, "Trump Admin Plans To Shut Down Free IRS Direct File Tax Program: Report."

April 17, 2025: International Business Times mentioned TPA in their article, "Trump Admin Plans To Shut Down Free IRS Direct File Tax Program: Report."

April 17, 2025: The Canadian Press (Canada) mentioned me in their article, "Trump administration plans to end the IRS Direct File program for free tax filing, AP sources say."

April 17, 2025: WBFF Fox45 News (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me for their segment on government transportation projects.

April 17, 2025: SN1CLA (Los Angeles, CA) mentioned TPA in their segment on the reported end of IRS' Direct File.

April 17, 2025: FOX Sports Radio quoted me in their segment on IRS Direct File.

April 17, 2025: Yahoo!News mentioned TPA in their article, "Trump administration plans to scrap IRS Direct File program."

Have a great weekend!



Best,

David Williams
President
Taxpayers Protection Alliance
1101 14th Street, NW
Suite 500
Washington, D.C. xxxxxx