The first presidential debate is set for Thursday night.
Yahoo Finance’s Ben Werschkul highlighted one key area to watch on Thursday:
Most of the top issues up for debate on Thursday are likely to make either President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump uneasy, but taxes could be a key exception.
Both campaigns appear to be of the mind that it’s a winning issue for them based on a wave of expectations-setting from both sides this week. And both are signaling plans to go on offense when it comes up.
Trump, looking to tap into many Americans’ dislike of taxes, will tout his plans for a wide array of cuts.
“Who wants to have high taxes?” Trump asked about Biden’s plans in a recent podcast appearance, listing it among Biden’s “worst policies.”
Biden is set to respond by underlining his populist position on the issue and repeating his promise to raise taxes on big corporations and the 1%.
Trump’s plan is to give “tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy on the backs of the middle class,” read a pre-debate memo from Michael Tyler, the Biden campaign’s communications director.
The broad strokes of the two candidates’ tax positions are well known ahead of a mammoth tax debate set for next year, but experts note there is still a lot to learn.
The winner this November will help decide the fate of a range of provisions from the Trump-era tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2025.
Biden has often discussed his 2025 plan as focused on renewing provisions from those 2017 cuts that impact Americans making under $400,000 a year while letting the provisions for the rich expire.
Biden also released a budget that pushes for an increase in the corporate tax rate to 28%.
Trump’s overall campaign message is a promise for a straight extension of those 2017 cuts and perhaps further reductions.
Trump also floated an array of tax ideas during a recent visit to Washington, including lowering the corporate tax rate to 20% from its current 21% level, as well as a long-shot idea to scrap the entire US income tax system in favor of higher tariffs.
But for all the noise around the issue “we haven’t seen many specifics on each side’s tax policy vision holistically,” said Garrett Watson, a senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation.
