As part of her campaign agenda, Kamala Harris announced fresh tax and economic ideas. From companies to individuals, the Kamala Harris Tax Plan would generate $4.1 trillion of tax income across the key components estimated by the Tax Foundation from 2025 through 2034.
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Kamala Harris Tax Plan
With less than two months remaining in the 2024 presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris has sketched out enough information about her fiscal and economic program for us to provide a preliminary analysis of the budgetary, economic, and distributional impacts.
Regarding tax policy, Harris carries over much of President Biden’s FY 2025 budget, including increased taxes targeted at corporations and wealthy incomes. She would also exclude gratuities from income tax and widen the child tax credit (CTC) as well as many other tax credits and incentives.
From 2025 to 2034, estimated Vice President Harris’s policies will raise taxes by almost $4.1 trillion gross. Harris would collect almost $1.7 trillion over 10 years on a traditional basis after considering many credits and tax cuts; after factoring in lowered income from slower economic growth, the net revenue gain amounts to $642 billion.
Detailed Kamala Harris Tax Proposals
Harris’s tax proposal depends on increased taxes on corporations and high incomes to generate fresh revenues as described in President Biden’s FY 2025 budget with some tweaks (to capital gains taxes, as stated) paired with many tax breaks. Except when otherwise stated, all clauses commence in calendar year 2025.
Major business provisions modeled:
- From 21% to 28%, the corporate income tax rate should be raised.
- Change the Inflation Reduction Act’s business alternative minimum tax from 15% to 21%
- From 1 percent to 4 percent, double the stock repurchase tax instituted under the Inflation Reduction Act
- Make the extra business loss restriction permanent for pass-through companies.
- Further, restrict Section 162(m)’s deductibility of employee remuneration.
- Calculate the tax on a jurisdiction-by-jurisdictional basis, change associated laws, and raise the worldwide intangible low-taxed income (GILTI) tax rate from 10.5 percent to 21 percent.
- Eliminate the lowered tax rate applied to foreign-derived intangible income (FDII).
Major individual, Capital gains, And estate tax provisions modeled:
- To get 5 percent on income over $400,000, widen the base of the net investment income tax (NIIT) to include non passive business income and raise the rates for both the NIIT and the supplementary Medicare tax.
- On income exceeding $400,000 for single filers and $450,000 for couples, raise the top individual income tax rate to 39.6 percent.
- For taxable income over $1 million, tax long-term capital gains and qualifying dividends at 28 percent (as opposed to 39.6 percent as in the Biden budget) and tax unrealized capital gains at death beyond a $5 million exemption ($10 million for joint filers).
- For high-income individuals with large individual retirement account (IRA) balances, limit retirement account contributions.
- Stiffen guidelines on the estate tax.
- For those earning more than $400,000, tax-carried interest is like regular income.
- Limit 1031 like-kind transactions to $500,000 in profits.
- Exempt from income taxes tipped income for professions where gratuities are already standard.
- Increase the $5,000 Section 195 deduction maximum for starting costs to $50,000.
Major tax credit provisions modeled:
- Revive and permanently implement the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) child tax credit (CTC), therefore raising the CTC for infants to $6,000 in the first year of life.
- Extend the ARPA earned income tax credit (EITC) increase for workers without qualifying children permanently.
- Over four years, give first-time housebuyers a $25,000 tax credit.
- We also modeled multiple energy-related tax increases mostly relevant to fossil fuel output for corporations, pass-through firms, and individuals. Although the Biden budget incorrectly labeled fossil fuel components as subsidies, many are deductions for expenses (or estimates of costs).
Not estimated, but rather included in overall budget consequences based on Biden administration projections are major provisions:
- Replace the base erosion and anti-abuse tax (BEAT) with an undertaxed profits rule (UTPR) compliant with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)/G20 global minimum tax model guidelines.
- Replace FDII with unidentified research and development incentives.
- Tax unrealized capital gains of high-net-worth taxpayers with a 25 percent “billionaire minimum tax”.
- Expand the ARPA premium tax credits (PTCs) expansion (we do include PTCs in our distributional analysis).
- Modifications in administration and tax compliance
Distributional Effects Of Vice President Harris’s Tax Proposals
Under Vice President Harris’s tax proposal, tax subsidies for lower-income families would be expanded while marginal income tax rates faced by companies and higher incomes would be raised, therefore greatly increasing income redistribution via the tax system.
Our simulation of the distributional effects on after-tax income just includes specified tax proposals and does not include the impact of drug pricing provisions, the 25 percent billionaire minimum tax, the undertaxed profits rule, mixed tax credits, IRS enforcement, or expenditure program adjustments.
Under the Harris tax proposal, poor earners would get revenue from rich incomes. While the highest 40 percent of earnings would face declines in after-tax income in 2025, the poorest 60 percent of earners would enjoy rises.
Mostly from enlarged tax credits, after-tax income for the lowest quintile would rise by 16.5 percent. By comparison, the top 1 percent of earners would see a 9.5 percent drop in after-tax income.
Conventionally, the poorest quintile would enjoy a much lower 13.6 percent growth in after-tax income in 2034; the top two quintiles would suffer declines in their after-tax earnings. After-tax income would drop 7.3 percent among the top 1 percent.