'Tis the season of tax-cut promises
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✂️ Dueling tax-cut promises by Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have made the 2024 campaign a season of giving, with each candidate trying to make Election Day feel like Christmas morning.
Why it matters: If you're an investor, a hospitality worker, a retiree, a parent with young children, or a corporation or small business, at least one presidential candidate has a little something — or a big something — for you.
- Neither campaign is paying much heed to how much all these proposals could cost, but both would add trillions of dollars to the national debt.
- Trump's plans would cost two to four times as much as Harris' over 10 years.
🖊️ That means both candidates almost certainly want to write checks that Congress won't cash.
Harris has paired her promise of higher taxes for those making more than $400,000 annually with tax cuts for the middle class.
1. For families with young children, Harris wants an expanded child tax credit that would be worth up to $6,000 per child each year. (Cost: $1.2 trillion over 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.)
2. For first-time homebuyers, she's promising a $25,000 tax credit, a substantial increase on President Biden's $10,000 offer. (Cost: $100 billion.)
3. For small business start-ups, she's proposed a ten-fold increase in the deduction they can claim, from $5,000 to $50,000. (Cost: unknown.)
4. On capital gains she's breaking with Biden, calling for a 28% tax rate, much lower than Biden's 39.6% proposal. The current rate is 20%. (The Harris plan would raise $190 billion less than Biden's.)
Trump wants a series of sweeping tax cuts, as well as targeted ones.
1. He'd extend his 2017 individual tax cuts (Cost: $3.3 trillion to $4 .6 trillion.)
2. He wants to eliminate the taxes seniors pay on Social Security benefits. (Cost: $1.6 trillion to $1.8 trillion.)
3. He's seeking to lower the corporate rate from 21% to 15%. (Cost: $600 billion.)
4. No taxes on tips. (Cost: $250 billion; Harris has proposed a similar plan.)
