Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) spoke to Hispanic Americans at a campaign stop in McAllen, Texas, on Friday, telling them that she and former Vice President Joe Biden’s “first order of business” is to get rid of President Trump’s tax cuts.
“I promise you this — as a first order of business, Joe Biden and I are about to work to get rid of that tax cut,” she said to cheers.
As Breitbart News’s John Nolte has reported, the Trump tax cuts, known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA), were a boon for the middle class.
The cuts practically doubled the standard deduction for singles from $6,350 in 2017 to $12,000 in 2018; nearly doubled the standard deduction for married couples from $12,700 to $24,400; and bumped up the child tax credit from $1,000 in 2017 to $2,000 in 2018.
Eliminating the Trump tax cuts would slash those deductions on working people and families almost in half — effectively a huge tax increase, since a married couple will be paying federal taxes on $11,700 in income they weren’t paying under the TCJA. For a tax rate of 20 percent, that would be an annual tax increase of around $2300.
The TCJA also actually raised taxes on the rich by capping the wealthy’s ability to deduct their state and local taxes from reported federal income to just $10,000. Before, the wealthy were able to deduct every penny of their local and state taxes from their federal income. It was an unlimited deduction, so whatever the wealthy paid in local taxes was deducted, and they paid no federal income tax on that amount.
However, Biden and Harris have repeatedly mischaracterized the TCJA as only helping the rich. They have also claimed they would not raise taxes, but their plan to eliminate the TCJA would effectively raise taxes on the middle class.
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