Why Harris is splitting with (some of) Biden’s capital gains plans

 

 

On a day when Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled a new plan for small businesses, the Democratic nominee also announced a change in her plans to pay for it by saying that the long-term capital gains rate for the ultra-rich should be 28%.

It marked a split with President Joe Biden, who has proposed a rate about ten percentage points higher than that for Americans making over $1 million dollars a year.

The tax pivot from Harris came after a wave of critiques from many business leaders of the Biden-Harris approach to capital gains, which is sometimes described as unworkable and punitive — and likely to dampen innovation.

Wednesday's move from Harris was announced in a speech in North Hampton, N.H., and was part of a larger attempt by the Democratic nominee this week to beef up her business world bona fides.

"My plan will make our tax code more fair while also prioritizing investment and innovation," Harris said in the speech in North Hampton as she tried to outline an approach focused on encouraging innovation and the long-term Biden-Harris priority to make the ultra-rich pay their "fair share."

"We know when the government encourages investment, it leads to broad-based economic growth, and it creates jobs which makes our economy stronger," Harris added Wednesday.

Continued support for taxing the 'unrealized' gains of the richest
But Harris also obliquely reaffirmed Wednesday that she supports an even more controversial idea from Biden: taxing the unrealized gains of the ultra-wealthy. (Unrealized gains are the growth in one's net worth that exists on paper but is still tied to an asset that hasn't yet been sold.)

"I support a billionaire minimum tax," Harris again said during the speech focused on economic policy at a picturesque small business near Portsmouth, N.H.

The billionaire minimum tax is a separate Biden plan that includes an effort to target the unrealized gains of households if their net worth exceeds $100 million.

It's an echo of calls from figures like Democratic Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren for a "wealth tax" but with more limited effects. The plan has nevertheless faced a wave of criticism, especially on the question of how it would be implemented.

Donald Trump has zeroed in in particular on the unrealized gains proposal charging that the idea was "beyond socialism."

A focus Wednesday on regular capital gains
What Harris was nonetheless focused on Wednesday — in addition to a tenfold expansion of a key small business tax credit and cutting red tape for small businesses — were these regular capital gains taxes.

These are taxes that are paid when investors sell their stocks or other assets and then actually reap the profits.

Long-term capital gains are currently taxed at 20% for the richest Americans.

Biden had proposed making those capital gains — at least for households making over $1 million a year — in line with the current top tax rate on wages. That rate is currently 37% but could rise to 39.6% in 2026 if Trump-era tax cuts are allowed to expire.

Harris, on Wednesday, clearly was attempting to find a middle ground with her 28% proposal, saying, "We will tax capital gains at a rate that rewards investment in America's innovators, founders, and small businesses."

Also on Wednesday, Harris reaffirmed that she supports increasing the federal corporate tax rate. A Harris aide previously told Yahoo Finance she wants that rate raised from 21% to 28%. Donald Trump has discussed lowering that rate to 15%-20%.

In any case, Harris’s varied tax ideas could face an uphill fight in Congress with many of these plans echoing ones that President Biden has been unsuccessfully pushing for years.

Those plans weren’t enacted even in 2021 and 2022, when Biden was in the White House and Democrats controlled both the House and the Senate.

But even with this week’s push for a middle ground on capital gains, Harris also signaled Wednesday that she will keep up a focus on tax fairness that has been a hallmark of the Biden years.

"It's just not right that those who can most afford it are often paying a lower tax rate than our teachers and our nurses and our firefighters," Harris said Wednesday. "It's just not right. It's just not right."