Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, marking her first significant revenue-raising initiative as the Democratic presidential nominee. This move is aimed at financing the ambitious plans she has outlined for her presidency. Harris’s campaign spokesperson, James Singer, emphasized that this tax hike is a “fiscally responsible” measure to ensure that billionaires and large corporations contribute their fair share, ultimately benefiting working people.
The proposed 28% corporate tax rate would undo a significant portion of former President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax reform, which lowered the rate from 35% to 21%. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that each percentage point increase in the corporate tax rate could generate around $100 billion over a decade. While Harris’s new proposal aligns with President Joe Biden’s recent budget, it represents a shift from her 2020 campaign stance, where she advocated for a full repeal of Trump’s tax cuts. Republicans are expected to push back against the proposed increase, setting the stage for a major debate in Congress, especially as many of Trump’s tax cuts are set to expire at the end of 2025.
There is a *lot* of confusion about the Biden-Harris Admin’s “unrealized capital gains tax” proposal. Who endorsed it? Who does it affect? Caveats?
I have studied it in detail and will explain it here thoroughly and *neutrally*. At the end, I’ll offer my opinion…
FACTS:
The… pic.twitter.com/Lc1UcpwaMn
— Max Meyer (@mualphaxi) August 21, 2024
Joe Bide was up to his old tricks last night when talking about billionaires and what they pay in taxes. He has been lying about this for years so why stop now. CNN fact-checked him this morning:
During his speech, Biden asked the audience if they knew what the average billionaire in the United States pays in taxes.
“We have a thousand billionaires in America. You know what the average tax rate they pay? 8.2%,” Biden said.
Facts First: Biden used this figure in a way that was misleading. As in previous remarks, including his State of the Union address in March, Biden didn’t explain that the figure is the product of an alternative calculation, from economists in his own administration, that factors in unrealized capital gains that are not treated as taxable income under federal law.
I’ve gone over all of this before. Billionaires actually pay around 24% or higher on their income. The figure Biden has repeated endlessly is made up out of whole cloth. If you count unrealized gains as income (which our tax law does not) then billionaires are only paying 8 percent.
This same lie, which has been fact checked by everyone from Politifact to the Washington Post, is also included in the Democratic Party platform document released yesterday. As you can see, the document calls for a 25% tax also presumably on unrealized gains.
h/t Virtual_Information3