By Trevor Hunnicutt
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Democratic U.S. presidential nominee Joe Biden would raise $2.4 trillion in new federal government revenue over the next decade, largely from tax hikes on corporations and the highest-income households, according to an analysis released on Thursday.
Analysts at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center revised a March estimate that suggested Biden would raise around $4 trillion in taxes, a figure that closely tracked other studies.
The $4 trillion figure became a regular attack leveled by President Donald Trump against Biden ahead of their Nov. 3 election contest.
Since the March analysis, Biden promised not to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 and proposed tax credits for people with children and businesses that invest in domestic manufacturing. Those proposals account for part of change in the analysis, according to the nonpartisan research group.
The center also pushed back its estimate of when most of the proposals would take effect from January 2021 to January 2022 because of the economic disruptions and legislative uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
Democrats hope to win not just the presidency but also to take control of the Senate, which would have to sign off on any taxes Biden wished to raise and is currently controlled by Republicans.
Biden has promised to roll back some of the corporate and personal income tax cuts Trump and Congress finalized in late 2017. He would also increase the taxes high-income earners would pay towards Social Security, which provides insurance benefits to the elderly and others.
Democrats promise to raise estate taxes, prompting wealthy Americans to scramble to tax planners and make changes before the end of the year, Reuters reported this month.
Biden wants to allocate the increased government revenue towards plans to boost education and healthcare subsidies for lower-income people, as well as his infrastructure and climate change proposals, though it is not clear if such spending could be financed without deficits.
(Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
