Joe Biden says that taxes would not increase for those who make under $400,000 under his proposed plans. Yet the 2020 Democratic nominee for president is either mistaken or lying, because his plans would indeed guarantee a tax increase for all tax-paying Americans.
When Biden and vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris went to ABC give their first joint interview together since her selection, Biden said any American earning more than $400,000 a year would face tax increases to “pay their fair share.” David Muir pushed Biden to clarify whether if he is elected taxes would increase for those who make less than $400,000 per year, and Biden assured voters that there would be “no new taxes. There would be no need for any.”
In fact, under Biden’s proposed plans, there would in fact be a need for across the board tax increases. Analysis of Biden’s plans by the Tax Foundation, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Tax Policy Center, Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), and Wharton Business School have all come to the same conclusion: Biden’s plans will increase taxes across the board.
Research and modeling by Huaqun Li, Garrett Watson, and Taylor LaJoie for the Tax Foundation has determined that “After-tax income for all taxpayers shrinks by 1.7 percent, lower than the 2.5 percent decline in 2021.” Along with raising taxes across the board, they’ve determined that the economy would shrink by 1.51 percent if Biden’s plans are enacted. Further, his policies would “reduce the overall wage rate by 0.98 percent, leading to 585,000 fewer full-time equivalent jobs.”
AEI’s analysis by Kyle Pomerleau, Jason DeBacker, and Richard W. Evans found that “Biden’s proposals would increase taxes, on average, for households at every income level.” They estimate that “tax filers in the bottom 95 percent” would see their after-tax income shrink by 0.3 – 0.8 percent in 2021.
In addition to individual taxes, corporate taxes would likewise be ultimately taken from the people Biden claims his policies are meant to protect. In the burden of corporate taxes, “20 percent falls on workers in the form of lower compensation.”
According to the CRFB, the Biden tax plan would not just increase taxes for the wealthy, but also “increase taxes for most other groups by 0.2 to 0.6 percent.”
John Ricco, Alexander Arnon and Xiaoyue Sun analyzed the Biden plan for Wharton, showing taxes would increase at every income level under his presidency, with the bottom quintile’s after-tax income decreasing 0.5 percent, and the second, middle, and fourth quintiles all seeing after-tax income drop 0.4 percent. Likewise, wages are projected to decrease.
Taxes are not solely affected by his specifically proposed increases. In an interview with Chris Cuomo, Biden promised to bring back the individual mandate from the Affordable Care Act.
The individual mandate requires nearly everyone in the country to either buy private health insurance, qualify for Medicare or Medicaid, or opt into the Obamacare. Refusal to do so would result in a tax penalty, which was undone by the Trump tax cuts in 2019.
Biden has also declared his intent to repeal the Trump tax cuts, which not only cut taxes for the wealthy, but for people of all income levels. According to MarketWatch, “Taxpayers making between $40,000 and $50,000 a year had the largest fall in average tax liability, a 14.5% drop.” Under Trump’s tax cuts, those making between $15,000 to $20,000 a year saw a tax decrease of 12.5 percent, $25,000 to $30,000 decreased 11.2 percent, and $100,000 to $200,000 decreased 10.96 percent.
Biden thus openly plans to replace a tax plan that has reduced many Americans’ tax burdens with one that would raise everyone’s taxes while slowing the economy.
Biden has literally been promising that he is going to raise taxes from the stump.
You can argue “ending the Trump tax cuts isn’t new taxes” if you want to die on that hill but those are far from the only middle class tax hikes we’d see under Biden.pic.twitter.com/ffgfykOhGC
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) August 24, 2020
Moreover, Biden told Anderson Cooper in an interview that he supports a carbon tax. Carbon taxes do not discriminate based on yearly earnings, but on carbon emissions. Should Biden enact this policy, the tax burden of those who make less than his threshold of $400,000 would definitely be affected.
With five independent agencies determining that his tax policy would raise taxes across all income levels, the return of the individual mandate tax penalty, the repeal of the Trump tax cuts, and the institution of a carbon tax, a Biden presidency would oversee tax increases for just about every working American.