Harris ties her own hands with $400,000 tax pledge

Congress faces a major “tax cliff” in 2025 with the expiration of the individual components of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, otherwise known as the Trump tax cuts. This year’s elections will largely determine the fate of trillions of dollars in tax cuts and the course of policy for years to come. At stake are individual tax rates, the doubled standard deduction, the enlarged child tax credit, the new tax break for businesses that file as individuals, and the increased exemptions for the estate tax. The Washington Examiner is featuring a series this week on key considerations for this major tax battle. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. This final story covers Vice President Kamala Harris’s pledge not to raise taxes on those making under $400,000 a year.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who hasn’t released a detailed economic plan, would have to thread the needle between a pair of seemingly contradictory tax pledges if she wins the election.

Her campaign says she’s keeping President Joe Biden‘s promise not to raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000. However, she also appears to be keeping Biden’s promise to let the 2017 Trump tax cuts “stay expired” when portions of the law lapse next year.

That expiration would raise taxes on middle-income earners in the absence of new legislation. The 2017 overhaul included lower tax rates, an enlarged child tax credit, a doubled standard deduction, and many other provisions that, on balance, cut taxes for people below the $400,000 threshold.

“We believe in a future where every person has the opportunity not just to get by but to get ahead,” Harris said at a Wisconsin campaign rally in late July. “Building up the middle class will be a defining goal of my presidency.”

While Democrats have almost universally attacked the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, better known as the Trump tax cuts, as a giveaway to the rich, it did include cuts for the lower and middle classes.

A contemporary analysis of the 2017 tax code rewrite from the Tax Policy Center, a center-left nonprofit research organization, found that it would cut taxes across the income spectrum. A score of the bill from the Joint Committee on Taxation, which provides tax analysis for Congress, found that majorities of middle-income households would see significant tax cuts. A report from the Congressional Budget Office, Congress’s nonpartisan in-house group of budget experts, indicated that the law reduced tax rates for all groups in 2018.

Thus, if elected, Harris would either need to extend the cuts or work with a possibly divided Congress to craft a new tax bill.

“If they really want to keep the under $400,000 promise, then they will have to write a new bill,” said Gerald Friedman, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. “Which they can do if they have a majority in Congress.”

Harris has not released details of her economic goals in a full term. Her team pointed instead to the budget that Biden released in March, which promises to “cut taxes for middle- and low-income Americans by $765 billion over 10 years.”

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt offered a different take, saying Harris would, in fact, hike taxes.

“Kamala Harris refuses to sit down for an interview and has zero policy plans on her website because she knows her plans to raise taxes are highly unpopular and she is trying to hide them from the American people,” Leavitt said. “But like Joe Biden already promised, Kamala Harris will sign the largest tax increase in American history, costing the average working family more than $40,000 per year on top of the record-high inflation created by Bidenomics.”

Trump has pledged to extend the 2017 tax cuts and add additional major tax reductions. In recent weeks, he has said he would eliminate taxes on tipped wages and on Social Security benefits. Those would be major changes: The first would reduce revenues by around $250 billion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The second would cost the Treasury $1.6 trillion. He has also talked about cutting the corporate tax rate further, to 15%. The 2017 tax overhaul lowered the rate from 35% to 21%.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum and a former Congressional Budget Office director, offered criticisms of both candidates.

He described Harris as “kind of stuck” between her two tax goals, but he said he also isn’t a fan of Trump’s tip wages and Social Security tax breaks, saying those forms of income should not be treated differently from other forms of income and that neither makes sense from a “tax-efficiency point of view.”

Republicans argue that Harris’s tax views are inconsistent with what she said during her 2020 presidential campaign and are part of a wider pattern of her campaign saying she has changed her view without offering any explanation.

“Kamala Harris is once again telling the American people not to believe their lying eyes,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN) said. “She has repeatedly vowed to repeal the Trump tax cuts ‘on day one’ and will continue the reckless economic agenda of the Biden-Harris administration that has led to double-digit inflation — both of which are tax increases on hardworking, middle-class Americans.”

Rep. Dan Kildee (D-MI), on the other hand, said Trump will effectively raise taxes on everyone via his proposed tariffs.

“If you make less than $400,000 a year, you will not see your taxes go up under Kamala Harris,” Kildee said. “This stands in stark contrast to Donald Trump, who wants to increase taxes on working people through higher tariffs on everyday goods. Donald Trump is a phony and a convicted fraudster. During his first term, the former president prioritized a massive tax cut for billionaires and his wealthy friends, paid for by adding trillions of dollars to the national deficit.”

Harris’s reluctance to release a detailed campaign platform so far does not seem to be harming her in the polls, where she has overtaken Trump for the lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average.

However, Trump continues to hold the edge when it comes to economic issues. A CNBC poll released Thursday found him leading Harris 2-to-1 on who would handle the economy better.