President Biden is set to deliver his plan for raising taxes on higher-earning Americans — while also ramping up IRS enforcement against them — in a bid to level “the playing field” for those in lower income brackets.
In delivering his tax-the-rich outline Thursday afternoon, Biden is expected to talk about “leveling the playing field in our economy to bring down costs and ensure that the backbone of the country, the middle class, can finally get a break,” an official told NBC News.
“He’ll underscore that we’ve reached an inflection point where we have to choose whether or not we’re going to perpetuate an economy where the wealthiest taxpayers and biggest corporations get to play by a set of rules they’ve written for themselves while middle-class families aren’t given a fair shot,” a White House official told the outlet.
He will also announce his intention to give tools to the IRS in order to strengthen tax enforcement on the highest earners in the US. Biden has promised that his plan will protect those earning less than $400,000 a year from a tax hike.
The president will outline the needs for lowering the costs for raising a child, prescription drugs, taking care of an aging parent, health care, high-speed internet and hearing aids, rather than lowering the cost of being wealthy, according to the report.
Biden’s plan comes just days after Democratic members of the House put together a draft proposal to raise $2.9 trillion in tax revenue by repealing some Trump-era tax cuts and raising taxes for large firms and couples earning over $450,000.
The House Democrats are looking to use the funds obtained to finance the $3.5 trillion spending package that is facing bipartisan backlash.
Last week, Senate Democrats also assembled a laundry list of possible tax hikes to help finance the proposed $3.5 trillion spending package, including but not limited to raising the top corporate tax rate “from 21 percent to a higher rate,” taxing stock buybacks, reinstating the 39.6 percent top personal income tax rate, taxing capital gains at the top individual tax rate for “high-income taxpayers,” and establishing a minimum corporate tax rate of 15 percent of a corporation’s “book income.”
Biden is looking to Congress to pass the massive spending bill and his infrastructure plan to help push these economic changes, but clashing among Democratic senators over the price tag could make moving the legislation forward difficult.
On Wednesday, White House chief of staff Ronald Klain claimed the multitrillion-dollar spending bill would “cost zero.”
“We have found a way to pay for every part of the spending with taxes,” Klain said in front of an audience of financial industry poohbahs at the annual SALT conference in New York. “The net cost of ‘Build Back Better’ is zero,” he said of the White House’s plan.
