Michael R. Strain, Columnist

Biden Would Smother the Economy by Raising Taxes

Promising to make corporations and the well-off pay more may be smart politics but it’s shortsighted policy.

October 14, 2020 at 2:00 PM UTC

Michael R. Strain is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F. Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It).”

He should break his promise.
Photographer: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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A high priority for a Biden White House would be to raise taxes on high-income Americans, and to push the corporate rate up to 28% from 21%. This would satisfy many progressives who want to see higher taxes at the top, but it would be a wrong-headed policy for a new administration, creating a headwind in a weak economy. And increasing the corporate rate would reduce U.S. competitiveness, productivity and wages over the longer term.

Biden pledges not to increase individual taxes on “anyone making less than $400,000.” The top individual income rate would go back up to 39.6%, from 37%, among other provisions. All told, the Biden plan would generate around $4 trillion in revenue over the next decade, a considerable amount.