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Kamala Harris on Tax Reform

Democratic candidate for President (withdrawn); California Senator

 


We won't raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000

HARRIS: Joe Biden will not raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year. He has been very clear about that. Joe Biden will not end fracking, he has been very clear about that. Joe Biden is the one who, during the Great Recession was responsible for the Recovery Act that brought America back. And now the Trump-Pence administration wants to take credit when they rode the coattails of Joe Biden's success for the economy that they had at the beginning of their term. On the other hand, you have Donald Trump who has reigned over a recession that is being compared to the Great Depression.

PENCE: [Biden] said he's going to repeal the Trump tax cuts. Joe Biden has said it twice in the debate last week that he's going to repeal the Trump tax cuts. That was tax cuts that gave the average working family $2,000 in a tax break every single year.

Source: 2020 Vice-Presidential Debate in Utah , Oct 7, 2020

Americans deserve transparency on president's taxes

Joe Biden has been transparent. The President has not. We now know that Donald Trump paid $750 in taxes. When I first heard about it, I literally said, "You mean $750,000?" And it was like no, $750. We now know Donald Trump is in debt for $400 million. It'd be really good to know who the President of the United States owes money to because the American people have a right to know what is influencing the President's decisions.
Source: 2020 Vice-Presidential Debate in Utah , Oct 7, 2020

Higher tax on wealthy to fund Medicare-for-All & teacher pay

The Harris version of Medicare for All would rest on much the same tax-the-rich moves the Sanders plan suggests. But she would limit her plan's premium fee to households making over $100,000 a year. To fund a $315 billion plan to raise teacher salaries, she calls for strengthening the estate tax and cracking down on loopholes that let our wealthy avoid taxes on "estates worth multiple millions or billions."
Source: The Nation magazine on 2019 Democratic primary , Nov 19, 2019

Tax credits for middle class & working families

There is no question that, over many decades, the rules have been written in a way that have been to the exclusion of lifting up the middle class and working families in America. That's why I'm proposing that one of the things that we do to address that is that we reform the tax code in a way that we'll give middle-class working families that are making less than $100,000 a year a $6,000 tax credit that they can receive it up to $500 a month.
Source: CNN SOTU 2019 interview of presidential hopefuls , May 12, 2019

Tax relief for middle class; repeal 2017 tax cuts

She introduced the LIFT the Middle Class Act which, Vox's Dylan Matthews explains, was basically an expansion of the earned income tax credit. Earlier, she proposed the Rent Relief Act, which would offer tax credits to help with rents. She said she would fully repeal the 2017 Republican tax law and replace it with LIFT.
Source: Axios.com "What you need to know about 2020" , May 7, 2019

Tax break for people unable to pay unexpected expense

[Harris Supports] a tax cut for the middle class and working-class Americans who can't afford to pay for an unexpected expense. Families making less than $100,000 a year, would receive $6,000 that they could access at up to $500 a month. She will pay for it by repealing Trump's tax cut that benefited the wealthy and corporations.
Source: Detroit Free Press on Democratic 2020 Veepstakes , May 5, 2019

Monthly tax credit would provide base income

Harris did introduce legislation to provide "middle class and working families with a tax credit of up to $6,000 a year--or up to $500 a month--to address the rising cost of living." It could fix one of the biggest drawbacks with the tax-credit system: It's distributed just once a year. "A monthly payment would be responsive to that because it would provide you a base income you can rely on," says a senior research associate at the Tax Policy Center.
Source: Mother Jones magazine on 2020 Democratic primary , Apr 23, 2019

LIFT Act: $500 monthly tax credit for eligible middle class

57 percent of Americans don't have enough cash to cover a $500 unexpected expense. That's one of the reasons I've introduced the LIFT the Middle Class Tax Act in the U.S. Senate, a bill that creates a major new middle-class tax credit that would provide eligible families up to $6,000 a year--the equivalent of $500 a month. Families would be able to receive the credit as a monthly stipend, rather than wait for a refund the following year. It's a different kind of safety net, one that prevents hardworking people from falling out of the middle class, or gives them a fair shot at attaining it for their families. This is the kind of tax relief we can provide when we stop giving endless tax cuts to corporations and the wealthy.
Source: The Truths We Hold, by Kamala Harris, p.219 , Jan 8, 2019

Payments to needy, not tax breaks for the rich

The Lift the Middle Class Act would provide monthly cash payments of up to $500 to lower-income families, on top of the tax credits and public benefits they already receive. "Last year, Congress gave a trillion dollars in tax breaks to corporations," Harris told me. "That money should have gone to American taxpayers who need it instead of handing it over to corporations and the top 1 percent."

Harris is offering as much as $3,000 a year for a single person or $6,000 a year for a married couple, on top of existing tax and transfer programs, disbursed either as a lump-sum tax refund or as a monthly payment. Working families making less than $100,000 a year would qualify, including those making close to nothing. As many as 80 million Americans would benefit, Harris's office has estimated, with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculating that the proposal would lift 9 million people out of poverty, including nearly 3 million kids.

Source: The Atlantic, "Tax Plan," on 2020 presidential hopefuls , Oct 18, 2018

Expand EITC, Child Tax Credit, and R&D Tax Credit

Source: 2016 California Senate campaign website, KamalaHarris.org , Aug 31, 2016

Other candidates on Tax Reform: Kamala Harris on other issues:
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Antonio Villaraigosa
Carly Fiorina
David Hadley
Delaine Eastin
Doug Ose
Eric Garcetti
Eric Swalwell
Gavin Newsom
Hilda Solis
Jerry Brown
Jerry Sanders
John Chiang
John Cox
Neel Kashkari
Travis Allen
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Duf Sundheim
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Kevin de Leon
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Page last updated: Dec 05, 2020