Americans for Tax Fairness released the following statement in response to remarks on taxes made by Vice President Kamala Harris in a speech in New Hampshire on Wednesday:
Vice President Kamala Harris in her speech on Wednesday addressed the important issue of progressive tax reform. She supported a billionaire minimum income tax, increasing the corporate tax to 28%, quadrupling the tax on stock buybacks, and other reforms so the very wealthy play by the same rules as the middle-class and we narrow the racial wealth gap. She also called for raising the long-term capital-gains tax rate for those with incomes over $1 million from 20% to 28%. She has said that billionaires and corporations must pay their fair share and indicated that the 2017 Trump tax cuts should not be extended for people making more than $400,000 per year. Former President Trump has said that he wants to lower the corporate tax rate from 21% to 15% and make permanent the other expiring parts of the 2017 tax cuts which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy.
Raising the capital-gains tax rate on the highest incomes almost exclusively impacts wealthy investors. It makes the tax system more fair while narrowing the racial, gender and income wealth gaps. Moreover, taxing wealthy investors raises substantial revenue that can be invested in the American people to help build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top. ATF supports equalizing the investment tax rate with the wage rate for the highest-income households, so wealthy investors pay the same rate as the tax rate paid by people who draw a paycheck, like nurses, teachers, and firefighters. Recent research shows that a higher capital-gains tax rate does not impede economic growth, but can actually promote it. Investors often note that they never turn down a money-making proposition out of concern for the taxes they might pay.