Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris has a track record of using the tax code to advance social and economic goals, such as ending child poverty and addressing climate change. While details of her 2024 tax agenda are not yet known, her past initiatives as a US senator and her brief 2020 presidential bid indicate a strong support for using tax incentives to encourage or discourage certain behaviors.
One of Harris’s signature proposals as a senator was the LIFT Act, which aimed at boosting incomes for low- and moderate-income families through a refundable tax credit. She also supported a refundable tax credit to assist households spending 30 percent or more of their income on rent, as well as initiatives to encourage the purchase of green energy products.
In addition to supporting tax breaks for certain behaviors, Harris has also proposed using taxes to discourage activities she does not favor, such as ending tax preferences for fossil fuels and prohibiting pharmaceutical companies from deducting direct-to-consumer advertising costs. She has also expressed interest in taxing capital gains at the same rates as ordinary income, raising taxes on foreign income of US-based multinational corporations, and implementing a financial transactions tax.
Harris has also supported government spending as a policy tool, endorsing a scaled-down version of the Medicare for All universal health plan proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders. However, it remains unclear how she plans to fully fund such ambitious initiatives, as the Sanders plan was estimated to be enormously expensive.
As for the future, Harris’s stance on the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is a top priority, as many of its individual provisions and some corporate provisions are set to expire at the end of next year. Harris has voted against the TCJA and has suggested options such as repealing the entire law, allowing its tax cuts to expire for the highest-income households, or repealing the tax cuts for large corporations. She has also vowed to protect households making $400,000 or less from tax hikes in 2025.
While the details of Harris’s 2024 tax agenda are yet to be revealed, her past record suggests that she will be a strong proponent of using the tax code to achieve her policy goals. With a history of supporting tax incentives, government spending initiatives, and using taxes to deter certain economic activities, a potential President Harris would likely continue to prioritize tax policy as a means to drive social and economic change.
