Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden already has promised to raise taxes, and on Sunday he offered some details, disclosing that his plan includes a hike for Americans who earn more than $400,000 a year.
Biden told ABC’s David Muir that some businesses also will see a tax raise, Fox Business reported.
“I will raise taxes for anybody making over $400,000,” Biden said. “Let me tell you why I’m going to do it. It’s about time they start paying a fair share of the economic responsibility we have. The very wealthy should pay a fair share — corporations should pay a fair share.”
Biden said he wants to target businesses that take in “close to a trillion dollars and pay no tax at all.”
Muir, noting the impact of the coronavirus crisis, asked if it was wise to burden businesses with new taxes.
“It’s smart to tax businesses that in fact are making excessive amounts of money and paying no taxes,” Biden said.
He said that there would be no new taxes for small businesses or individuals who earn $400,000 or less.
The tax hike would bring in $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis by the Tax Foundation. But the real figure, the Tax Foundation said, would be about $3.2 trillion “when accounting for macroeconomic feedback effects.”
President Trump told Fox Business Biden would bring the “biggest tax increase in history.
‘A lot of you may not like that’
As WND reported, Biden told potential donors in June he would end most of President Trump’s multitrillion-dollar tax cuts, even though “a lot of you may not like that.”
At the virtual event, which raised at least $2 million, Biden vowed to strengthen the middle class and make sweeping investments in clean energy and infrastructure.
“Folks, this is going to be really hard work and Donald Trump has made it much harder to foot the bill,” Biden said.
He said that prior to the coronavirus lockdown, Trump’s “irresponsible sugar-high tax cuts had already pushed us into a trillion-dollar deficit.”
“I’m going to get rid of the bulk of Trump’s $2 trillion tax cut,” Biden said, “and a lot of you may not like that, but I’m going to close loopholes like capital gains and stepped-up basis.”
Biden also vowed to raise the corporate tax rate to 28%. The Trump plan reduced corporate taxes to 21% from 35%.
Similarly, in 1984, a Democratic former vice president running against a tax-cutting Republican incumbent vowed to the American people that, if elected, he would raise their taxes.
It didn’t turn out well for Walter Mondale, who won a mere 13 electoral votes while President Ronald Reagan took 525.
“Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I,” Mondale said in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination. “He won’t tell you. I just did.”
