Harris backs ending taxes on tips, echoing Trump proposal

Vice President Kamala Harris is rolling out a new policy position, saying she’ll fight to end taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers. 

It’s a proposal her opponent, former President Donald Trump, has touted all summer in an effort to win over tipped workers. Campaigning in Las Vegas on Saturday with running mate Gov. Tim Walz, Harris pledged to work to eliminate federal taxes on tips earned by restaurant employees and other service industry workers. 

“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,” Harris said in Nevada. 

It may be one of the few policies on which Harris and Trump agree, as they spend the next three months persuading voters to support their vision for America’s future. The president doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally exempt tips from federal taxes — that’s something Congress would need to pass in order for the president to sign.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said President Biden supports Harris’ proposal to eliminate federal taxes on tips. 

The Culinary Union, which represents 60,0000 hospitality workers in Nevada, praised Harris for the policy announcement. 

“Vice-President Kamala Harris acknowledged the hard working men and women of the hospitality industry and committed tonight in Las Vegas to raise the minimum wage across the country and fight to end taxes on tips once elected as the next President of the United States of America,” the union said in a statement. 

Trump first announced his support of eliminating taxes on tips in June, and has reiterated the stance frequently at rallies. The former president, in response to Harris’ platform announcement over the weekend, called her a “COPYCAT.” But Trump isn’t the first politician to propose eliminating federal taxes on tips.

As early as 2007, former Rep. Ron Paul introduced legislation in the House to exempt tips from both federal income and payroll taxes, to no avail. And former Republican Rep. Phil Crane of Illinois also called to eliminate federal taxes on tips in the 1980s, according to contemporary news reports kept by the Government Publishing Office and highlighted by the Huffington Post. 

The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that Harris’ proposal to exempt tip income from federal income taxes and raise the minimum wage would increase deficits by $100 billion to $200 billion over the next decade. The Trump proposal to nix federal taxes on tips could cost up to $250 billion, the CRFB said previously. 

Three weeks after Mr. Biden dropped out of the race for president, Harris has offered little in the way of new policy proposals or platforms to distinguish her campaign from Mr. Biden’s. But with the Democratic National Convention slated to begin in one week, more proposals could be forthcoming.