CNN
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Vice President Kamala Harris will push for an increase in the corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 28%, her campaign team announced on Monday, the first day of the Democratic Party convention in Chicago.
Just days after unveiling a four-part economic package designed to provide tax relief to workers and the middle class in the United States, the corporate tax proposal is Harris’ first attempt to detail how she plans to finance her political program if she wins the presidential election.
“As president, Kamala Harris will focus on creating an economy of opportunity for the middle class that promotes their economic security, stability and dignity,” campaign spokesman James Singer said in a statement. “Her plan is a fiscally responsible path to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and major corporations pay their fair share.”
The rate increase, which is in line with what President Joe Biden has supported but below the 35% rate proposed by Harris during her 2020 presidential campaign, would undo a key component of former President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. That law cut the 35% corporate tax rate – and it doesn’t expire, unlike the TCJA’s individual income tax provisions, which expire after 2025.
Raising the corporate tax rate would reduce the deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates. The watchdog group estimates that Harris’ stimulus package would cost $1.7 trillion over the next decade.
Trump, on the other hand, has said he will cut taxes on corporations and provide relief to Americans. Trump would like to cut the corporate tax rate to as low as 15% – although he admitted in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek last month that such a large cut would be difficult.
Last Friday, Harris proposed a populist economic program that includes measures aimed at making housing, food, health care and child-rearing more affordable. It would provide tax relief to more than 100 million middle-class and low-income Americans, primarily by restoring the increased child tax credit from the American Rescue Plan Act and by creating a new $6,000 tax credit for children in their first year of life.
