Update 809 — Harris on Offense in Debate;
Behind the Debate: the Candidates on Taxes
Vice President Harris held court last night in what could well be the last presidential debate of the 2024 campaign. On the opening question, Harris presented a rendition of her vision of an “opportunity economy” and a break from the past. She focused on middle-class needs like affordable housing and tax relief for start-ups and small businesses, while effectively goading and assailing Trump for an economic policy plan promising only tax cuts for billionaires and large corporations.
The candidates were asked at the outset about the issue voters “repeatedly say is their number one issue: the economy and the cost of living.” Harris attacked the Trump “20 percent national sales tax” plan, based on tariffs, advocated tax reforms, and assailed Trump’s tax plan as a “giveaway” to billionaires and large corporations. Below, we go behind the fog of the debate to examine the candidates’ records and plans on tax policy.
And remembering 9/11…
Best,
Dana
Last night, presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump met on the debate stage for what is expected to be their only showdown before the November 5 election.
The debate, hosted by ABC News, opened with a question about the economy, the cost of living, and taxes. Vice President Harris introduced herself first as “a middle-class kid” and outlined her plans for an “opportunity economy.” She opened by mentioning her proposal to provide first-time homebuyers with $25,000 in down-payment assistance to address housing concerns and expand the Child Tax Credit (CTC) to $6,000 a year for children in the first year of life, calling it “the largest increase in the child tax credit we have given in a long time.”
She also made specific and repeated mention of her proposals to increase the small business startup tax deduction from $5,000 to $50,000, describing start-ups as the “backbone of the economy.” Increasing the startup deduction during next year’s tax reform effort looks likely no matter the outcome in November, as it can draw bipartisan support.
Harris assailed tax cuts for “billionaires and large corporations” and attacked Trump, who “left us the worst unemployment since the great depression,” for what she called his plan for a “20 percent national sales tax — $4,000 a year cost per person.” Overall, she noted that Trump’s fiscal plan would explode the debt by $5 trillion, cause inflation, and run the risk of pushing the economy into a recession.
Both candidates questioned their opponent’s path forward on economic/tax policy (or perceived lack thereof), with Trump saying only that Harris doesn’t have a tax or economic policy plan and trying to defend his tariff policy, which he reminded us did not create inflation during his term. His claims of the benefits of additional tariffs were inverse to the reality of their impact, according to economists. Harris summarized her opinion of her opponent in a similar manner, saying Trump “has no plan for you… it’s all about tax breaks for the richest people.”
Despite these jabs, both candidates have indeed laid out their preliminary plans for tax policy in what will surely be an important year for the topic. Below, we explore the recent history and details of each tax policy slate back-to-back, assessing both the cost and the merit of the ideas put forth thus far.
Background: TCJA Expirations and Party Priorities
The candidates know that next year, tax policy will be center-stage as Congress considers individual provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) scheduled to expire at the end of 2025. The winner of this year’s presidential election will have a clear role in shaping the future of our tax code, deciding if we trend towards a code that focuses on fairness and raising revenue for direct investment in the American people or continue on a path that rewards the wealthy and corporations without meaningfully benefiting the economy or trickling down to lower-income groups.
The TCJA, enacted in 2017 as a landmark policy of the Trump administration, offered a series of tax cuts at an expected cost of $1-2 trillion between 2018 and 2025. A majority of this benefit went to wealthy individuals and corporations and there is little evidence that the expensive tax cut significantly benefited the economy at the macro or micro level. An extension of the expiring individual TCJA provisions alone could cost upwards of $4.6 trillion over 10 years according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), a majority of which would, again, go to the wealthiest Americans.
For these reasons, Democrats have united behind a shared goal of using the forced consideration of expiring tax policy to enact a more progressive tax code, in which the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share like the rest of America must.
On the other hand, the architect of the TCJA, Donald Trump, has encouraged Congress to extend the expiring provisions in addition to enacting new cuts for the wealthy and corporations. His fellow Republicans and supporters have embraced this message despite the lack of a clear plan to raise additional revenue to pay for cuts.
While both presidential campaigns will likely expand on some of their tax policy proposals as election day nears, the information we have up to this point paints a clear contrast between candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, the former focused on tax cuts for lower- and middle-income Americans paid for by heightened taxes on the wealthy and corporations and the latter focused on expanding giveaways for corporations and his rich friends.
Harris’ Tax Approach
President Biden, before stepping down as the Democratic presidential nominee, laid out detailed plans to raise revenue in his FY25 budget proposal. This proposal, which includes a collection of $5 trillion in tax increases on the wealthy and corporations, would raise money for investments in the American people and result in a budget surplus that could be used to reduce the soaring national debt.
In the opening days of her bid for President, Harris expressed support for many pieces of Biden’s tax plan, going as far as to say she supports all of the revenue raisers in his FY25 budget. Though she has not spoken to every revenue-raising proposal from the budget, she has explicitly affirmed her commitment to enacting the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax (BMIT) – a 25 percent minimum tax on income and capital gains, including unrealized gains, for individuals with net worths over $100 million – quadrupling the stock buyback excise tax enacted through the IRA from one to four percent, and increasing the corporate tax rate from 21 to 28 percent. These reforms would raise almost $2 trillion in revenue over 10 years, according to estimates included in Biden’s budget. Additionally, Harris has backed Biden’s pledge to prevent tax increases for those who make less than $400,000 a year, often referred to as the $400K pledge.
More recently, however, she has begun to find her own voice on tax policy, expanding on Biden’s proposals for assistance and scaling down his plans for raising taxes on capital. The main items in Harris’s tax platform, which was clarified in a release of her economic policy agenda unveiled in North Carolina last month and expanded in subsequent speeches, include:
- Refundable Tax Credits – Harris has proposed expanding the Child Tax Credit (CTC) and Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), two of the most effective policies for addressing poverty. Harris will principally support restoring the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) expansion of the CTC and EITC, a main focus of Democrats in next year’s tax fight. The expanded CTC provided up to $3,600 per child under age 6 and up to $3,000 per child ages 6 to 17, with no cap on the credit amount and full refundability (meaning beneficiaries could receive the balance of the credit as a refund if it was larger than their liabilities). The ARPA expansion of the EITC included a heightened credit for individuals and couples without children, increasing from $500 to $1,500 before adjusting for inflation. In addition to these reforms, Harris proposed a heightened Child Tax Credit of $6,000 for families with children in the first year of life. Combined, these proposals would cost $1.35 trillion over 10 years, according to the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB).
- Healthcare – Harris has vowed to extend improvements on Health Insurance Premium Tax Credits (often referred to as Premium Tax Credits or PTCs). These improvements were enacted through ARPA and extended in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) through 2025. Expirations would lead to an average increase in tax liabilities of $700 per year for roughly 20 million qualified beneficiaries. An extension of the improved PTCs would cost $400 billion over 10 years, according to the CRFB.
- Housing – Harris has promised to provide a tax credit of $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time home buyers. She has also promised to introduce a “first-ever tax incentive” for home builders who sell starter homes to first-time home buyers as part of her goal of building 3 million new homes during her presidency. Additionally, Harris proposed enhancing the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) to encourage the development of affordable rental housing and implementing the Neighborhood Homes Tax Credit, a federal tax credit that would provide money to developers for the rehabilitation of homes in distressed neighborhoods.
- Capital Taxation – While President Biden had suggested taxing capital gains at 39.6 percent for individuals earning over $1 million annually, Harris has put forward a rate of 28 percent, citing the economic value of encouraging investment. She does, however, support Biden’s plans to raise the surtax on investment income (Net Investment Income Tax or NIIT) for wealthy individuals from 3.8 to 5 percent, bringing her proposed top capital gains rate to 33 percent (*the revenue from the NIIT goes to the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund, not general revenues). Including Harris’ support of quadrupling the stock buyback excise tax mentioned above, the CRFB estimates that Harris’ plan for reforming capital income taxation could generate $750 billion to $900 billion over 10 years.
- Small Business Taxation – In a move to position herself as a more business-friendly candidate than Biden, Harris proposed a series of policies that would help grow the small business sector. Limited to tax policy, Harris plans to expand the tax deduction for startup businesses (Section 195 deduction limit) from $5,000 to $50,000 and make it cheaper and easier for small businesses to file their taxes.
- Tip Income Taxation – Following the Trump campaign’s announcement of plans to exclude tip income from federal income taxation, Harris announced her own proposal which would pair such reform with an increase in the federal minimum wage. Exempting tip income from the federal income tax would cost $150 to $250 billion over 10 years, according to the CRFB.
Trump’s Tax Approach
Trump, on the other hand, has announced a series of new tax cut proposals in addition to supporting an across-the-board extension of all expiring TCJA provisions. Trump’s new proposals, which would add over $5 trillion to the national deficit when including the cost of extending TCJA provisions, include:
- Lowering the Corporate Tax Rate – During his last term, Trump permanently lowered the corporate rate from 35 percent to 21 percent through the TCJA. This cycle, he announced plans to lower it further to 20 percent for all corporations and 15 percent for corporations that make their products in the United States. While costs may vary depending on how these proposals take shape, the CBO generally estimates that a one percent change in the corporate tax rate is equivalent to a $100 billion change in revenues over 10 years.
- Excluding Tip Income from Federal Income Tax – As mentioned above, Trump proposed this idea on the campaign trail a few months ago at a Las Vegas rally stop. Trump’s proposal, unlike Harris’s, would likely not involve action on the minimum wage, restricting benefits arbitrarily to those who work in tipped occupations.
- Ending Federal Taxes on Social Security Benefits – Trump has proposed eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits, which are currently taxed but at a discounted rate depending on income. While this move would effectively increase Social Security benefits, which a vast majority of voters support, it would also put further pressure on the program’s finances. The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund, which pays out a majority of Social Security benefits, is currently projected to reach insolvency in 2033, at which point benefits will have to be cut by 21 percent to match program income. According to the CRFB, this reform would accelerate program insolvency by more than a year, from late 2033 to early 2032.
Trump’s slate of tax proposals has received criticism from across the ideological spectrum, with some experts skeptical that his policies would have a positive effect on the economy and others concerned about his seemingly blatant disregard for the effect these policies would have on federal deficits.
Though Trump has not addressed offsets for his tax policy plans in too much detail, he has suggested levying sweeping tariffs to raise revenues. Trump has proposed increasing tariffs to 10 to 20 percent across the board and to 60 percent on imports of goods from China. The Harris-Walz campaign refers to these proposals as a “national sales tax” or a “Trump sales tax,” perhaps as a reminder that companies often pass their tariff burdens onto consumers, raising prices for everyday Americans. A study from The Peterson Institute for International Economics found that Trump’s proposed tariffs could cost a typical US household $2,600 annually, essentially passing the cost of tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations onto the consumer.
A Quick Glance Forward
The Presidential candidates’ contrasting views on tax policy present a clear choice for voters in November: an opportunity economy focused on supporting the working and middle class by increasing federal revenues from the wealthy and corporations or a continuation of trickle-down policies proven to benefit those who need it the least.
Though last night’s debate will likely be the last time we see the two candidates in the same room, we can expect candidates to continue to expand on their own tax policies and denounce those of their opponent given the attention Congress will give to the expirations of individual TCJA provisions next year. We have yet to hear how Trump and Harris plan to address expirations related to:
- the estate tax,
- the heightened standard deduction paired with limits on itemized deductions, or
- the 20 percent pass-through deduction, to name a few items to be on the lookout for.
What is still unclear is how both candidates plan to manage the large cost of their proposals given the soaring national debt, which surpassed $35 trillion this summer. The Harris and Trump tax plans released thus far would add to federal deficits and the national debt, though the Penn Wharton Budget Model projects a much smaller deficit impact of $2 trillion on a dynamic basis for Harris’ as compared to $4.1 trillion for Trump’s. The candidates have left much to clarify in terms of explicit pay-fors or offsets for their ambitious proposals — unclear is whether there is time for them to shape a comprehensive plan to enact a defining piece of the fiscal policy puzzle in the first year of their presidency.