Biden Would Not Raise Taxes on Americans Earning Less Than $400,000

Former Vice President Joe Biden participates in a Democratic presidential primary debate at CNN Studios in Washington on March 15, 2020. Evan Vucci/AP Photo

Presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden said on Friday that he would not raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000 per year.

Biden made the remarks in an interview with CNBC, in which he said economic recovery from the outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, seems to be a “long way away.”

“Nobody making under 400,000 bucks would have their taxes raised. Period. Bingo,” the former vice president told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.

The shutdowns and associated plummeting demand destroyed a record 20.5 million jobs in April, according to Labor Department figures released May 8, and pushed the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent, both post-World War II records.

Newest Labor Department figures released Friday show that, in April, 43 states reported record levels of unemployment, with hardest-hit Nevada, heavily reliant on the embattled hospitality industry, surging 21.3 percentage points to a jobless rate of 28.2 percent.

People who lost their jobs wait in line to file for unemployment at an Arkansas Workforce Center in Fayetteville, Ark., on April 6, 2020. Nick Oxford/Reuters

Congressional relief measures worth trillions of dollars have led the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve to set up roughly a dozen programs designed to keep American families and businesses afloat during the outbreak.

Biden, as part of his bid for the White House, has made a number of economic and tax proposals.

In terms of taxation, Biden proposes to change the tax code to increase the tax burden on the wealthy, who, according to his campaign website, “have gotten too many tax breaks for too long.” He has argued for a blanket repeal of Trump’s tax cut, arguing that it has disproportionately benefited the rich and fueled income inequality.

Former Vice President Joe Biden participates in a Democratic presidential primary debate at CNN Studios in Washington on March 15, 2020. Evan Vucci/AP Photo

Biden’s proposal to bring the tax rate back to pre-Trump levels would mean raising rates across the board for all taxpayers, raising taxes on family-owned businesses, and bringing the corporate income tax rates back from the current 21 percent up to 35 percent, one of the highest rates in the world. He also said he wants to raise taxes on long-term capital gains and qualified dividends.

“The capital gains tax should be at what the highest minimum tax should be, we should raise the tax back to 39.6 percent instead of 20 percent,” Biden said in an interview on Iowa Public Television.

Biden has also called for the elimination of “special tax breaks that reward special interests.” He has also vowed to close $1.6 trillion in “tax loopholes,” including pledging to eliminate the stepped-up basis loophole, which allows heirs to pay less in taxes on their inheritance.

An analysis of Biden’s tax plan released in March by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, which is led by a former Obama administration official, found that all income groups would see their taxes go up, although people earning over $837,400 would see the biggest hikes.

“Biden would increase income and payroll taxes on high-income individuals and increase income taxes on corporations. He would increase federal revenues by $4.0 trillion over the next decade. Under his plan, the highest-income households would see substantially larger tax increases than households in other income groups, both in dollar amounts and as share of their incomes,” the study authors noted in the abstract.