Senator Kamala Harris said she’d seek to repeal all of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul, including its breaks for wealthy earners, corporations and the middle class.
“Get rid of the whole thing,” the California Democrat and presidential contender said after a campaign event in Detroit.
Her campaign spokesman Ian Sams said she’d seek to replace the law with her proposed LIFT Act, a nearly $3 trillion refundable tax cut focused on middle-income earners.
Harris’s stance goes further than most Democrats, who have called for repealing parts of the 2017 law that grants steep tax breaks for corporations and upper earners, as well as restoring the full state and local tax deduction, which was limited to $10,000.
Getting rid of the entire law would also mean repealing the doubling of the standard deduction and higher child tax credit, which benefit middle-class Americans. While the law as a whole is unpopular, those provisions poll well.
Her remarks came after she spoke to members of the American Federation of Teachers and pressed her $315 billion education plan to give public school teachers a raise.
Harris derided critics of her education plan, using a mocking tone to repeat something she said she’s frequently asked — “Well, how you gon’ pay for it?” — which drew laughter from the crowd.
“On Day One,” she said, “we’re going to repeal that tax bill that benefited the top 1 percent and corporations.”
Repealing the entire 2017 law would affect nearly every taxpayer by increasing rates and cutting the child tax credit in half to $1,000. It would also decrease the standard deduction to $12,700 down from $24,000 for a couple filing jointly. It would also increase the corporate rate to 35 percent, as well as again require American corporations to pay U.S. taxes on all their offshore profits.
Those tax cuts would be replaced by Harris’s plan to offer refundable tax credits to lower and middle-class families of as much as $6,000 a year. LIFT stands for “Livable Incomes for Families Today.”
The credit would apply to households earning less than $100,000 annually. Single filers earning under $50,000 a year would get $3,000. The credit could be accessed monthly or in one lump sum at the end of the year. It would begin to phase out for single taxpayers without children earning at least $30,000, single taxpayers with children earning at least $80,000, and married taxpayers earning at least $60,000.
