After Beefing Up IRS Tip Enforcement, Kamala Now Claims Trump’s “No Tax on Tips” Agenda As Her Own
During a campaign rally at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas on Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris surprised supporters by coming out against taxes on tips. She told the crowd, “When I am president, we will continue our fight for working families of America, including to raise the minimum wage and eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers.” Because Las Vegas is dominated by the service and hospitality industries and tips make up a large portion of the average worker’s income, the crowd was delighted by the proposal and roared their approval.
This campaign promise was outrageous for two reasons. First, because former President Donald Trump has been touting his plan to end taxes on tips for months. Her campaign stole Trump’s idea and then Harris presented it as if it were her own.
Understandably angry following Harris’s announcement, Trump quickly fired off a post on Truth Social. He wrote: “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! 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!!!”
Second, and what makes this situation all the more egregious, is that two years ago, the Biden-Harris administration planned to crack down on unreported tip income as part of its grand plan to maximize tax revenues. They wanted to ensure that the government received every taxpayer dollar it was entitled to and planned to track down taxpayers who were not paying their fair share. The August 2022 so-called “Inflation Reduction Act” provided $80 billion in new funding for the Internal Revenue Service.
Fox Business News host Elizabeth MacDonald explained on X that the “Biden-Harris Admin also launched a novel new IRS crackdown on tips, getting the IRS inside the door at bars & restaurants to directly monitor tips at the cash register, ‘at point-of-sale.’ She also backed the $1.7T spending legislation expecting taxpayers to report their $600 phone app transactions to the IRS without she and the Senate reading the bill (later dropped as untenable).”
The Washington Post reports that a president could not enact a “change in the taxation of tipped income” on their own. It would “require an act of Congress.” In June, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) introduced the No Tax on Tips Act. According to the Post, Nevada’s two Democratic senators, Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, both supported the bill.
Why would Harris propose a policy idea that completely contradicts legislation that she fully supported just two years ago?
It might be because she is trailing Trump in Nevada, a battleground state won by both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and by Joe Biden in 2020. Both won by margins of less than 2.5 points. The RealClearPolitics average of polls in the state shows that Trump is currently ahead of Harris by 3.7 points.
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Elizabeth writes commentary for The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a member of the Editorial Board at The Sixteenth Council, a London think tank. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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