Harris Dodges Questions on Billionaire Tax Reform

Vice President Kamala Harris has gone silent on Democrats’ bid to tax unrealized investment gains — casting doubt on how strongly she’d push for a key plank of the party’s efforts to raise taxes on billionaires.

Harris, who has already pledged to scale back one of President Joe Biden’s key policies on capital gains taxation, is declining to give specifics about her support for other pillars of the administration’s vision to raise taxes on businesses and the wealthy. That includes a White House plan to tax unrealized gains, a major proposed Internal Revenue Code change designed to increase levies on the richest Americans who are often able to avoid taxes under the current rules.

The Democratic nominee still supports a billionaire minimum tax, a campaign official said in a brief statement, speaking on condition of anonymity. Her team declined to provide specifics about that proposal or comment directly on how unrealized gains would be treated.

Harris’ campaign also declined to say if she supports the specific parameters of the minimum tax on billionaires included in Biden’s annual budget request to Congress, which — despite the name — would apply a 25% minimum levy to income of those with at least $100 million in assets. Her campaign has been mum about whether she would seek to change a provision in the tax code that allows many wealthy individuals to avoid capital gains taxes entirely when they pass assets onto their heirs.

The move to tax unrealized gains was one of the more polarizing features of Biden’s budget…  Läs mer proposal — critics saw it as murky to enforce and a disincentive for growth, while advocates cheered it as an innovative way to tax the rich more.