By Molly Claire Goddard
12:21am PDT, May 17, 2025
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Despite being a conservative,
Kevin O'Leary is not thrilled with the GOP's tax plan.
During a Tuesday, May 13, appearance on
Varney & Co., the
Shark Tank star railed against
Donald Trump's "big,
beautiful bill" proposal despite typically being a major supporter of the president and the Republican Party.
Keep reading to learn what O'Leary said about the proposed legislation…
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"This is anti-American. It's against small business. I've never seen anything like it. You want to talk about [a] big, beautiful bill? This is a big, ugly piece of that
bill. It's got to get fixed," Kevin O'Leary claimed of Donald Trump's tax plan during his media appearance.
The ABC star made it clear he disapproved of the proposed legislation from an entrepreneurial perspective. "For small business[es], I'm their advocate," he noted. "So, I read all these bills."
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Kevin O'Leary's most imperative critique of the bill was the end of the pandemic-era Employee Retention Credit. The program gave government funds to businesses that allowed people to keep their jobs throughout the spread of
COVID-19.
"That program's over. They want to give new powers to the IRS to audit all those small businesses for up to nine years. That's unprecedented. Why would we want to do that to small business?" the millionaire said. "So many of these audits would occur after the period where they don't have their records. This is war on small business."
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Although Kevin O'Leary has been an advocate for many of Donald Trump's past actions during his second term in office, he emphasized how his bill must be edited before it's officially passed.
"I read it and said, 'This can't be right. Why would they do this?'" he explained. "It's outrageous that they would attack small business like this and unprecedented to get powers to the IRS like this because it won't stop there. They're looking to save money. I get it, ERC saved millions of businesses," O'Leary clarified. "Some people claimed it was fraudulent. Sure, there's fraud in every government program. But 95 percent of these businesses deserve that money and are still in business because of that money. And now somebody says, give the IRS power to go rip into them. That's not okay."
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Since Donald Trump returned to office in January, Kevin O'Leary has been supportive of the right-wing leader and
Elon Musk's government budget cuts.
"Keep slashing, keep hacking, while you have a 24-month mandate before the midterms," the investor said during an episode of
Laura Coates Live in February. "Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, more, more cutting. Believe me, it's going to work out just great. Everybody should be happy about this.
Cut everything."
