Vice President Kamala Harris proposed raising the child tax credit (CTC) for families with newborns Friday, despite voting against a bill that doubled the credit in 2017 under then-President Donald Trump.
In addition to a variety of reductions in corporate and personal income tax rates, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) raised the child tax credit from $1,000 to $2,000, and increased the maximum qualifying income from $75,000 to $200,000 for single filers and from $110,000 to $400,000 for married couples. Less than 7 years after voting against the TCJA, Harris has made boosting the credit one of her core economic policy proposals, proposing to raise the benefit to $6,000 for families with newborns.
“Vice President Harris’ plan makes a historic expansion of the Child Tax Credit: providing up to $6,000 in total tax relief for middle-income and low-income families for the first year of their child’s life,” a campaign fact sheet released Friday stated.
Five days prior to Harris’s announcement, Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance on Aug. 11 suggested expanding the CTC to $5,000 per child.
“I’d love to see a child tax credit that’s $5,000 per child,” Vance told CBS’s Margaret Brennan.
In late July, Ammar Moussa, the director of rapid response for the Harris campaign, attacked Vance for promoting a lower tax rate for people with children in a 2021 interview.
Sen. JD Vance: “We should have a $5,000 child tax credit for parents.”
The media: “How insulting and rude to childless Americans!”
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Kamala Harris: “I think we should give new parents a $6,000 child tax credit.”The media: “Thats a fantastic idea!” pic.twitter.com/LHoPQDM9yF
— Elizabeth Weibel (@elfaddis) August 16, 2024
Trump has previously accused Harris of being a “copycat” for adopting his promise that service workers won’t be taxed on their tips if he is elected in November.
“Kamala Harris, whose ‘Honeymoon’ period is ENDING, and is starting to get hammered in the Polls, just copied my NO TAXES ON TIPS Policy. The difference is, she won’t do it, she just wants it for Political Purposes,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on August 10. “This was a TRUMP idea – She has no ideas, she can only steal from me. Remember, Kamala has proposed the LARGEST TAX INCREASE IN HISTORY – It won’t happen. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!”
The 2017 TCJA reduced corporate and income tax rates, raised the standard tax deduction, ended the individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act that penalized Americans who did not purchase health insurance and expanded the child tax credit, among a variety of other policy initiatives, according to its text.
Harris opposed the TCJA at the time because saying it reduced income tax rates for the highest tax bracket.
“The Republican tax bill that passed the Senate is a travesty,” Harris wrote in an X post in 2017. “It gives even more tax breaks to the top 1% and permanently cuts corporate tax rates at the expense of middle class families. This isn’t what Americans wanted, and it’s up to us to fight back at the ballot box in 2018.”
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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