Billionaire businessman Mark Cuban slapped down concerns that Vice President Kamala Harris supports raising taxes on capital gains despite her campaign’s plans to do so.
Cuban, a prominent surrogate for Harris’s presidential campaign, promised a worried voter during an Arizona town hall meeting that “you’re not going to see a tax on capital gains” if the vice president won the election. In a CNBC appearance on Squawk Box following his Arizona comments, Cuban reiterated his claims, which fly in the face of a tax proposal the Harris campaign released last month.
“So some people think that there’s going to be an unrealized gains tax on capital gains,” Cuban said in Phoenix over the weekend. “There is not, there is not.”
“If I’m wrong, she’s going to hate to hear that. I’ll work so she doesn’t get elected again. Because that’s how wrong I think that is, but I already know it’s not going to happen. So I just like to say that to sound dramatic,” he continued.
.@mcuban said this weekend that @VP would not tax unrealized capital gains, and if she does, he would campaign against her. "I can pick out probably 10 things where you would say, yeah I'd campaign against her. So what do you like?" about Harris, asks @JoeSquawk: pic.twitter.com/VCv5p2pvcd
— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) October 21, 2024
However, Cuban’s words directly contradicted the Harris campaign’s announcement in early September that pledged to raise the tax on unrealized gains for top-income earners from 20% to 28%. Combined with another proposal to raise the net investment income tax to 5%, the total federal capital gains tax rate would sit at 33% during a hypothetical Harris administration, the highest in decades.
Harris’s 33% capital gains proposal follows her previous support for President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2025 budget, which called for 39.6% long-term capital gains taxes for top-income earners.
The capital gains tax is a tax on the profits people make from selling an asset. It currently stands at 20% for the highest earners in the United States, the same as China’s rate.
Former President Donald Trump called Harris’s capital gains proposal reminiscent of “communism“ during a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday.
“You sell something, you pay the tax. … She wants an unrealized [capital gains tax], and she refuses to say that ‘no, we’re not going to do that.’ She refuses,” Trump warned.
“It’ll be a great business for appraisers and for lawyers and for accountants. Other than that, it’s a disaster,” he added.
However, as he campaigns for Harris with the group “Business Leaders for Harris,” Cuban has been steadfast in rebutting concerns about her capital proposals.
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In September, the same month Harris unveiled her plans to increase the taxation of unrealized gains, Cuban told CNBC, “Every conversation I’ve had [with Harris campaign] is that it’s not going to happen.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to the Harris campaign for comment but did not receive a reply at the time of publishing.
