President Joe Biden is planning a massive tax increase that’s certain to upset Americans. After delivering another round of stimulus checks, he plans to deliver a big tax bill.
In an interview yesterday, President Biden said he planned to increase taxes on individuals earning $400,000 or more. He would raise the federal tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent for those earners.
Also, consistent with campaign promises, Biden plans to raise corporate tax rates from 21 percent to 28 percent. In short, Biden is scaling back some of the pro-growth tax cuts that the Trump administration and Republican-led Congress delivered several years ago.
Then later, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki corrected President Biden, explaining that even more Americans would be subjected to a tax hike. She clarified that the proposed tax hike would apply to families earning $400,0000 or more, not just individuals at that threshold. This means a person who earns $200,000 per year could be slapped with a tax hike if he is married to someone who makes the same amount.
There are other expected tax increases affecting higher-earners as well.
Tax increases are a no-go for most Americans
According to new Rasmussen polling, nearly two out of three (64 percent) likely voters oppose increasing taxes. Just one out of five (22 percent) support tax hikes, and 14 percent are uncertain.
Interestingly, nearly half of voters think federal tax levels are too high, this four years after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed.
Opposition to Biden raising taxes is not ideological, but bipartisan. Some 43 percent of Democrats oppose a tax increase, joining 82 percent of Republicans and 70 percent of voters not affiliated with either party.
Bills are piling up and more are coming
Biden’s proposed tax hike would be the first major tax increase in nearly 30 years. He plans to use the revenue to finance new federal spending on infrastructure, climate, and poverty programs. There’s no indication that one penny would go to pay down our burgeoning debt.
The tab for a year’s worth of federal spending is racking up. The $1.9 trillion recent package joins $4 trillion of federal spending in 2020–all of it unpaid so far.
Stimulus spending may have been justifiable to help families and small businesses in the aftermath of the coronavirus outbreak and prolonged pandemic closures. However, the question of how we would pay for this took a backseat as though our nation could afford to spend indiscriminately.
The economy is slowly recovering as states and cities reopen schools, businesses, and tourism. Instead of finding new ways to spend taxpayer money, it’s time that Washington figures out how we will pay back all of the taxpayer dollars that left federal coffers.