Vice President Kamala Harris claimed in the debate with former President Donald Trump that his previous tax cuts and current tax policies are designed to help the wealthy . Here are the facts and context.
Trump’s biggest legislative achievement was the 2017 passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act , better known as the Trump tax cuts. The legislation, which Democrats heavily opposed at the time, touched just about every facet of the tax code.
“When you look at his economic plan, it’s all about tax breaks for the richest people,” Harris said at one point during the debate.
“My opponent, on the other hand, his plan is to do what he has done before, which is to provide a tax cut for billionaires and big corporations, which will result in $5 trillion to America's deficit,” she said at another point.
The Trump tax cuts did benefit the wealthy, but they also benefited nearly every American because they lowered taxes across the board. The rich benefited from Trump lowering the top marginal income rate in 2017, from 39.6% to 37%. For this year, that rate applies to income above $578,126 for a single taxpayer. Many high-income households also benefited from the corporate tax rate cut, the new break for businesses that file through the individual side of the tax code, and the increase to the exemption for the estate tax.
But the Trump tax cuts also lowered taxes for middle- and lower-income households, including by lowering income taxes for lower brackets, expanding the child tax credit, and doubling the standard deduction.
An analysis by the Tax Policy Center, a left-of-center Washington think tank, found that 80.4% of taxpayers received tax cuts, across the income spectrum.
As for Harris's claim that Trump's plan would add $5 trillion to the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office, the budget scorekeeper for Congress, found that extending the Trump tax cuts another decade would add $4.6 trillion to the deficit.
But Harris is put in a tricky position because she has said she will keep the tax cuts for those earning under $400,000 a year — which would entail keeping the majority of the cuts.
Harris and Trump have both proposed other tax cuts in the lead-up to the November election.
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Harris has called for the elimination of taxes for tipped workers, a policy proposed just weeks before by Trump. Exempting tips from federal taxation would be a straightforward tax cut. However, tax experts have argued it would probably lead more service workers to demand to be paid in tips rather than wages, which would result in a correspondingly larger reduction in federal revenues.
Trump, meanwhile, also wants to eliminate taxes on Social Security benefits and has proposed lowering the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15%.
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