Many Americans have been told to expect bigger tax refunds after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, thanks to a higher standard deduction and new deductions for tips, overtime and seniors. In Episode 018, Nicky P, Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton ask why the money was taken in the first place, what a refund really is when the deficit keeps growing, and what to do with the extra cash if it shows up.
“Why didn’t we, why did we take it in the first place?”
The headline sounds like good news: tax refunds are supposed to be bigger than they've been in years, because the rules changed while most people's withholding stayed the same. Nicky opens by asking if we're ready for a fat slice of national debt cake. Luke cares about the next generation, so to him this is a bit of a yikes moment.
What We Covered
Why take it in the first place? Rob's first thought: if the government is giving money back, why did it take it? Money does more good in the hands of the people who earned it. He also notes the deficit is still growing by a couple hundred billion dollars a month, by his estimate, so it's hard to see how this is good news.
An interest-free loan to the IRS. Luke tells clients that withholding is an interest-free loan to the IRS. He files quarterly, and if he underpays, the IRS charges interest on the difference. Nobody pays him interest for paying early. Rules for thee, but not for me.
What's in the bill. Luke reads the list: a higher standard deduction, deductions for tips and overtime up to set limits, an extra deduction for seniors sold as no tax on Social Security, a bigger child tax credit tied to inflation, and changes to childcare, 529 plans and education savings accounts. Rob sees the government causing the problem with heavy taxes, then offering a handout for it, without doing anything about spending.
“The point of any system is what it does, not what it’s supposed to do.”
A system is what it does. Nicky shares a saying he likes: the point of any system is what it does, not what it's supposed to do. By that measure, he says, the point of our monetary system seems to be making money worth less. Luke agrees, and adds that bigger refunds and cheaper gas look a lot like buying votes.
Nothing is free. Nicky says people only hear the first half, free stuff, and assume there must be a surplus. Rob puts it plainly: anything called free, you're paying for through a dollar that buys less. You might not feel it now, but you will when prices are much higher years from now.
Seventh generation thinking. Nicky brings up seventh generation thinking, which Jack Spirko often talks about: the idea that a healthy society asks whether what it does today leaves people seven generations out better off. He sees the opposite in our culture, including treating homes, which wear out every year, as something expected to keep rising in value.
“Anything that’s quote unquote free you’re paying for.”
Silver isn't up, the dollar is down. Rob's family has started describing prices differently. Silver at around $64 an ounce isn't silver going up. It's the dollar going down. The same goes for real estate, gold and other major assets.
Rothbard and real money. Luke talks about Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, which he has worked through on audio, all of it. Rothbard explains an economy priced in grains and ounces of gold. What matters is a stable asset with real value, not a currency worth less than it was two weeks ago.
What your property really costs. Nicky describes an argument about whether stolen property matters because you can just buy another one. His point is that a car represents thousands of hours of someone's life. Luke connects it to the broken window fallacy: destruction isn't good for the economy, no matter how much rebuilding it creates. Nicky jokes that we should all burn our houses down every fall.
Key Takeaway
Politicians change the rules to make you feel good in the moment. If a bigger refund does show up, Luke's question is what you'll do with it. One option is to put it toward a long-term asset you control, so you're ready for the next political change instead of counting on the government to look out for you. That's the planning we do with clients at Perfect Spiral Capital.
Key Moments
[0:00] The One Big Beautiful Bill Act
[2:00] An Interest-Free Loan to the IRS
[3:00] What's in the Bill
[5:00] A System Is What It Does
[7:00] Nothing Is Free
[8:00] Seventh Generation Thinking
[9:00] Silver Isn't Up, the Dollar Is Down
[10:00] Rothbard and Real Money
[14:00] The Broken Window Fallacy
[16:00] What Will You Do With a Bigger Refund?
“Politicians wanna steal your money. They wanna change the rules, and they wanna buy your votes by changing the rules and making you feel good in the moment.”
Related Episodes
Episode 006: Trump's Tariffs Ruled Illegal: Who Really Pays for Tariffs?
Episode 010: Does a Government Shutdown Hurt the Economy? Trump's Permanent Cuts and 23% of GDP
Episode 045: The Fed's $41 Trillion Problem: Why the White House Stopped Showing the Numbers
Want the full conversation, including Nicky's case against burning your house down for the economy? Listen to the full episode and grab the free toolkit at PerfectSpiralCapital.com/podcast.
FAQ
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For many people, yes, at least for the 2025 tax year. The law raised the standard deduction and added new deductions for tips, overtime and people 65 and older, among other changes. If your paycheck withholding didn't change to match, more of what you overpaid comes back as a refund.
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No. A refund is your own money coming back after you overpaid during the year. Luke Tatum calls withholding an interest-free loan to the IRS, since the government held the money all year without paying you anything for it.
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It’s a saying that you should judge a system by what it actually produces, not by what it was meant to do. Nicky P applies it to the monetary system, which by that measure seems built to make the dollar worth less over time.
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Luke Tatum suggests putting it toward a long-term asset you control instead of spending it right away. He and Rob Brayton use properly designed whole life insurance for this. Cash value grows on a contractually guaranteed basis, and you can borrow against it for whatever comes next.
Show full transcript
Between The Lies: Episode 018 Transcript
Big Tax Refunds Are on the Way [0:00]
Nicky P: Here we go again. Big tax refunds are on the way. I'm told. Sounds like the money printer is revving up again. Welcome to the Between The Lies Podcast, your weekly lesson on how to approach an uncertain world with positivity and balance. I'm Nicky P here with my good friends and money brains, Luke Tatum and Rob Brayton from Perfect Spiral Capital, as they help us navigate the snares and pitfalls in a world of trust me bro economics.
Stick around to the end of the video for their free toolkit and be sure to like and subscribe if you enjoy the video. Gentlemen, are you ready for your fat piece of national debt cake with a side of who cares about the next generation?
Luke Tatum: I don't know about you, but I do care about the next generation. It's kind of a yikes moment.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act [0:00]
Luke Tatum: I mean, for me, so, well, I mean, what we're talking about today. Is the big headline. Trump is saying that, and you know, the Republican base, I guess they're, we're all hearing that tax refunds are gonna be bigger than ever or bigger than they have been in a long time. You know, everybody's gonna get more money back because they've kept their withholding the same.
And yet there's changes to the tax rules with the one big beautiful bill act, the OBBBA. And so we're going to. We're all gonna be feeling richer, right? And yet at the same time we have inflation and we have, you know, the money being taken out of our paychecks in the first place. Like, oh, you know, there's lots of things you could pick apart with that, but that's the short version of what we're talking about today.
You're supposed to get maybe one or $2,000 more, or yours, your tax refund. So, you know, does, don't you feel great. I dunno. Rob, what's your first pass on it?
Why Take It in the First Place? [1:00]
Rob Brayton: Well, yeah. My first thought is, you know, if we're gonna give people money back, why didn't we, why did we take it in the first place? So, I mean, that's my first thought.
Like the money is gonna do way better off in someone else's hands than it ever is in the hands of the government. 'cause we know how efficient they are at everything, right? So, not only that we have, I mean, the deficits still. Couple hundred billion dollars a month, give or take, so roughly a trillion dollars every three or four months or whatever it is that we're adding to the deficit.
Yet somehow this is good.
Luke Tatum: Yeah. You know? Yeah. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Right? Yeah. It's the same old story.
Nicky P: I mean, I'm personally never one that loves giving people interest free loans, like maybe my kids, but, definitely not, the government.
An Interest-Free Loan to the IRS [2:00]
Luke Tatum: You know, the withholding thing, like this is something I say to clients on a fairly regular basis.
It's like, you know, why give the IRS an interest free loan? Like that's what withholding is, you know? But if you don't pay, like we have to file quarterly over here. And so if I don't pay exactly the correct amount, when I file quarterly, they're gonna tabulate interest on everything that I didn't pay. And it's like, well, why don't you pay me interest since I gave you money upfront?
You know, it's like, It's just, rules for the, but not for me, kind of a situation. But here I'll just read the bullet points of all the things that are allegedly happening here and we can start to pick 'em apart. There's, that's honestly very fertile ground for this. But, so the standard deduction, is.
What's in the Bill [3:00]
Luke Tatum: Increasing, we've got no tax on tips, which is really just a threshold where there's no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security, which again, is just kind of a tweak, boost to the child tax credit and decide they've pegged the value to inflation on that now or to CPI, expanded access to childcare.
529 plans, some tweaks, and those, education savings accounts, those sorts of things. So, that's, I mean, basically what we're talking about, but the idea is, you know, wow, the government's really looking out for me. I mean, so what's wrong with that?
Rob Brayton: Yeah, I, anytime somebody is, I don't know, it just, it really takes me back to.
The Problem and the Handout [4:00]
Rob Brayton: You know, the government causes the problem and then they're offering you a solution to it. And that, that's really what you just see in this case is it's like it's onerous taxation and here's a free handout to, for the problem that we've already created. And, you know, it'd be different. Like we were, like I had mentioned before, it'd be different if they were doing something to control the spending, but I mean, it's not, it's not getting any better.
So they have. You know, Nick's opener, right? They have to print the money in order to do it. So what's, what is the point? It's so silly to me, at least on that front.
A System Is What It Does [5:00]
Nicky P: So I once heard somebody say, and I heard them say this a lot, the point of any system is what it does, not what it's supposed to do. So if I were to just be taking wild guesses, I'd be assuming the point of our monetary system is to make our money worth less.
Luke Tatum: Yep. Yep. If you're looking that up, the, it's a system is what it does, right? You can, there's a Wikipedia page for that, and, I think that's the appropriate way to look at government. And it's like, well, okay, the, you know, politicians passed this so that blah will occur. Okay? But what actually happened, you know.
That. I mean, is it possible that we have hundreds of years now of history with this country and we're just all stupid and nobody's ever gonna learn any lessons from anything? I mean, maybe. Maybe it's all unintended consequences and it's all, oh gosh, darn it. We were just trying to help. Ha. But I don't really think it is that, you know, I think it is like a predatory system, you know?
Buying Votes [6:00]
Luke Tatum: This is, and maybe one of y'all have, you know, more to say on this, but it also reeks a little bit of bribery, right? Buying votes, buying, you know, favor from the general population. Oh, you know, my, I'm paying less at the gas pump and I got $2,000 extra on my tax refund, so I love Republicans, or whatever, right?
Whatever we're supposed to think about that.
Nicky P: Who is the, who had the quote about that one? Because there's a quote about that. It's, you know, wait until democracy works, until the politicians discover that they can promise anything they want and bribe people to vote for 'em.
Luke Tatum: Sounds like Friedman or I, you know, I don't know.
I don't know.
Rob Brayton: Yeah, I mean, it's too many good quote. It's manipulation in a lot of ways, right? I mean, that's all it is. And then I, and I think that's the frustrating part is, you know, if you're the one out there saying that, well, you're the bad person automatically if you're in the media or anything on those lines, right?
Nothing Is Free [7:00]
Nicky P: People don't think about this, like, because, and they're kind of trained not to. The whole system is designed to get them not thinking about it, but they get bribed by free stuff or by money back or, you know, whatever it is that the government promise them. And they only catch the first half of that where it's, hey, free stuff.
They don't ever, because they hear about it that way. They don't realize, oh, it's not free. It really doesn't even exist. Because we have all this other stuff we're just not paying for or putting on the credit card. They think that, oh, well, if they can give it back, then there's a surplus. Must be that this money comes outta the big money pile to give to me.
They're unaware of the, you know, the printing press option that the government has.
Rob Brayton: Well, I think a great way to say that though too, Nick, is anything that's quote unquote free you're paying for. Like you are paying for it because your dollar is going to buy less plain and simple. So you might not feel it or see it right, right now.
But fast forward 20 years from now when everything's double or triple in price from what it is today. Assuming nobody does anything drastic to fix the problem, you paid for it. So it doesn't matter. You're going to pay for it. And, and that's the part that's. That sucks. Like,
Seventh Generation Thinking [8:00]
Nicky P: Well, I hate to feed into it, but, Jack Spirko always talks about seventh generation thinking and the idea that like, you wanna have a successful society, you have to be thinking and acting, to.
Thinking and acting seven generations out is, is what I'm doing today going to make my, the, you know, seven generations better off than like I am right now? And we literally have the exact opposite in our culture. Like most of what we've dealt with as millennials is a product of the boomers, you know, looking out for themselves.
Oh my God, my home value is going up so much. This is so good for me. Most other places in the world don't like treat housing, like it's a, an investment opportunity. Like how many other things can you buy that are expected to increase in value that deteriorate every year? Like you're not, your house is never going to be better than the day it was built.
Somehow it's supposed to be worth more. That should be a signal to everyone that like money is being looked at backwards in some way.
Silver Isn't Up, the Dollar Is Down [9:00]
Rob Brayton: Yeah, it's, I like that you bring that up, Nick, because we actually, in my house, we were just talking about this recently because the value of silver, quote unquote, is up, right?
It's like at a historic high. And we were kind of talking about it, and one of the things that we've started to shift the talking points about are, oh. The, silver is, or the dollar is now down to $64 an ounce for silver. Instead of saying it's up, it's not, it's actually down. So that's why the perceived value is higher, because the dollar is worth that much less and that, that's what we see going on with all these different asset classes.
I mean, you real estate's there, gold, you name it. Anything that's a major asset. Is clearly jumping up way up and it's because of our dollar eroding and purchasing power.
Rothbard and Real Money [10:00]
Luke Tatum: I love that you say that, Rob. And, and this is something before, you know, pre-show. We were talking a little bit about like Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard and some of these things.
And this morning we were talking about that and. Rothbard in his gigantic economic treatise that I can't in good faith recommend anyone to read 'cause of how big it is. Man, Economy, and State. If anybody ever has the courage to tackle that, it's right behind me.
I can't point It's over here. And so,
Nicky P: Wasn't it Man, Economy, and State and money and markets.
Luke Tatum: Power and Market. Yeah, Power and Market is like an add-on. It's like 1200 pages or something. You know, and I've read it all the way through. I'd listen to it on audio, like a complete, you know, lunatic, but. But in the book consistently, right? Because the whole thing is building out how an economy works, and then Power and Market.
The very, very, very, very last part is, okay, now if you introduce a government, what happens? Right? And so he builds out how all of economic stuff works without a government, and it's just, it's a beautiful thing. But, he's consistently talks about it in gold, you know, grains of gold. Ounces of gold. And so.
That's it, that's how it could work, right? And it doesn't matter if it's a physical, you know, physical bar of gold or coin or whatever. It, what it, what matters is that you have a stable asset. You know, a thing that has value, an actual real money instead of a fiat currency like we have here. I didn't really expect us to get into all this on this episode, but you know, it's just such an interesting perspective shift to go, yeah, this thing has value.
This asset, but. Money is just kind of this weird distorted view of that where we go, oh yeah, dollars. You know, what's the value of a dollar? Well, it not what it was two weeks ago. You know,
What Your Property Really Costs [12:00]
Nicky P: Since perspective keeps getting brought up in the show, allow me to. A couple weeks ago, I was arguing with my, one of my band mates in our podcast that we have.
Somehow it got into politics. I don't remember why, but one of the things that came up is you remember a couple years ago, Seth Rogen had, had got a little kerfuffle because he, It was some talk about, oh, you know, having your car stolen, your car broken into, and how it's not a big deal. You know, sometimes a guy breaks into your car and leaves you a cool knife, and the, one of the things that always follows in that line of conversation is it okay to, you know, use lethal force to protect property because it's just property, man.
You can just go and buy another one. And the perspective that. People don't have, or they need to have at least it certainly help. Is that Well, no, you, what you see is the object you don't see necessarily, perhaps in the state of a car. The thousands upon thousands of hours of my life that I gave up to acquire the things necessary to have that.
It's like, you know, you steal somebody's vehicle, you're equivalently stealing years of their life. Hey, you might as well just not live those years. Tough titties. And because people don't ever see that perspective, it's, you know, they just think about the end result. They don't see the path, they don't see the economy functioning like the economy functions.
They don't see everything. What it weighs out in everything else. Like we talk about, oh, it's worth in gold, what's it worth in Bitcoin? You know, a good place to start is, you know, what's this worth in my life? How much of my life do I have to give to this to maintain it?
Luke Tatum: Hours of labor? Yeah. I mean it's the.
The Broken Window Fallacy [14:00]
Luke Tatum: Broken window fallacy, right? Is it butts up right to this, it's the standard thing to kind of analyze that. If you're a politician and you wanna make people feel better that there was a earthquake and a bunch of people you know died and a bunch of houses were destroyed, you say, oh, well actually this is good for the economy because it's gonna give.
All the construction companies in the area, more houses to build and you know, you're stimulating the economy. You have to buy new doors, windows, furniture, you know, just think of the furniture store down the street and how much money they're gonna be able to make and how much that's gonna provide in terms of jobs and stuff.
But the obvious, the obvious duh thing is that. People's entire livelihoods are gone. Priceless antiques, priceless memories. You know, things are gone and destroyed. It's the same argument that they use to justify things like war. War destroys things and humans. And it is not good for the economy, you know?
Nicky P: Yeah. Why don't we all burn our houses down every fall, you know? Yeah. You know,
Luke Tatum: It's good for the economy. No, that's what I hear.
Nicky P: No get, you know? No, that's usually the plan. It gets summertime, it gets a little too warm. You know, you don't need houses, just burn 'em. Rebuild them over the course of this summer.
And it's good for the economy. That's right. I mean, nothing's lost. Just, you know, creating work,
Luke Tatum: Conservation of energy or something. You know.
Nicky P: Luke, why don't you, take us outta here. Yeah, yeah.
What Will You Do With a Bigger Refund? [16:00]
Luke Tatum: Short episode this week. Just having a good time talking about, you know, the annoying thing of taxes. Right. So, so the last thing I just wanna kind of cap this off with is just that.
Politicians wanna steal your money. They wanna change the rules, and they wanna buy your votes by changing the rules and making you feel good in the moment. But if you're getting a bigger refund check or something, what are you gonna do with it? Right? The opportunity before you is potentially to position that for some kind long-term, you know, sovereign.
Controlled by you type of asset and be ready for the next political upheaval. Because the go, the government is not gonna take care of you. You know, they're not looking out for you. A system is what it does. All these things that we've talked about today, I, this was kind of a fun bounce around for all these vocab terms and like economic ideas.
So, you know, what are you doing today? To get ready for next time there's something changing and we can help you do that Perfect Spiral Capital. Rob can help you do that. I can help you do that. We're here to help and support and build long-term visions with our clients. So, you know, all I can say is thank you very much for joining us again on this week's episode, as if you're interested in all those ideas.
Then the next thing you should probably do is sign up for our free toolkit over at. The perfectspiralcapital.com/podcast url you'll find in the description box below. And. It's a free toolkit. Get, you're gonna get two free video courses and a copy of my Amazon bestselling book Between The Lies. If that doesn't get you started, I don't know what will, and until next time.
