A month into the campaign, the Harris-Walz campaign has finally gotten around to announcing policy — and perhaps now voters can understand why they waited so long in the first place.
Earlier this week, the Harris team unveiled their tax plan, and it was predictably framed as targeting the richest of the rich and forcing the 1% to “pay their fair share,” as usual, review of the plan proved that the middle class would be hit especially hard.
Breitbart News reports:
Harris's campaign announced an enormous economic package on Monday that would undo former President Donald Trump's tax cuts, claiming it would be part of “a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.”
The plan calls for an annual 25 percent minimum tax on unrealized gains for those making more than $100 million. Unrealized gains are, on paper, gains in an investment, per Investopedia. Gains are only “realized” when an investor sells an investment for more than its initial price.
Her plan would increase our capital gains tax to 44.6% — over double that of communist China's 20% capital gains tax.
Her plan increases the taxes small business owners pay on their individual tax returns, imposes an additional “death tax” (a mandatory capital gains tax at death), and a 21 percent global minimum corporate tax rate (6 percentage points higher than the Organization for Economic Development's (OECD) current 15 percent global minimum tax rate). Her plan QUADRUPLES the stock buyback tax, with the potential to decimate Americans' 401(k)s and retirement accounts.
Her plan demonstrates a sharp contrast in ideology between the campaigns and their philosophies, as Trump reduced the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% while he was in office, as well as lowering income tax rates. On the campaign trail, Trump has also promised to eliminate taxes on social security income for seniors as well as taxes on tips for service workers. Harris adopted his No Tax On Tips proposal two months after he announced it at a rally in Nevada.
On the contrary, the Harris plan implements a 30 percent federal excise tax on electricity used in cryptocurrency mining, a $37 billion tax on American energy, and a 32 percent increase in Medicare taxes.
Ahead of the 2020 election, Joe Biden promised that taxes wouldn't go up on anyone earning under $400,000 annually, but Americans at every income level noticed diminishing returns — especially in the last year of his administration. People found themselves with either comically small returns compared to what they received in years prior, or found out they actually owed the IRS money, despite no significant changes to their income or assets.
Last week, before sharing her tax plan, she called Donald Trump's 10% import tariff proposal a “sales tax” on the American people, and there is little evidence to back up the claim that consumers would end up paying for tariffs. Trump imposed tariffs on China during his first term, and there were no significant price hikes on goods from the super power.
