Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday is set to propose expanding a tax break for start-ups, one of a series of policy ideas her campaign is rolling out this week aimed at helping entrepreneurs and small businesses.
The plan, which Ms. Harris will announce during a speech in New Hampshire, would allow new companies to deduct up to $50,000 in start-up expenses, a campaign official said. The move would increase by tenfold a $5,000 deduction that companies can now claim for expenses, like advertising and salaries, that they incurred before they started operating.
The goal of the proposed expansion is to help start 25 million small businesses if Ms. Harris is elected. In New Hampshire, she will also discuss creating a new fund to help small businesses expand, easing regulations and simplifying the taxes small businesses owe by creating a universally available deduction, the campaign official said, without offering additional details. The official revealed the plan on the condition of anonymity to freely share details of a policy proposal not yet released publicly.
Owners of so-called pass-through businesses, the structure for the vast majority of corporations in the United States, already enjoy access to a generous deduction that many progressives view as overwhelmingly benefiting the wealthy.
Since taking over the top of the Democratic ticket, Ms. Harris and her advisers have subtly sought to take a friendlier approach to the business community than President Biden did. Ms. Harris has closer relationships in Silicon Valley, which she once represented as a senator from California, and on Wall Street than Mr. Biden does. Her donors are encouraging her to emphasize the virtue of entrepreneurship and to abandon some of Mr. Biden’s most liberal ideas.
At the same time, Ms. Harris’s campaign has released four new advertisements since the party’s national convention that portray her as an ally of the middle class and former President Donald J. Trump as a friend to billionaires and big corporations. Voters express more trust in Mr. Trump’s handling of the economy than Ms. Harris, with many listing inflation as one of their top concerns heading into November.
The ads represent an effort to turn a weakness for Democrats into a strength. The latest ad argues that big businesses are responsible for rising prices and that Ms. Harris’s plans will fight inflationary corporate greed, though economists say that a variety of global economic factors are responsible for higher prices.
If Ms. Harris wins in November, taxes will be a central issue in her first year in office. Washington is gearing up for a major legislative battle next year over the expiration of many of the tax cuts Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017.
Ms. Harris has effectively pledged to preserve those tax cuts for households making less than $400,000 a year, while also proposing a series of additional tax cuts of her own. Her campaign has also said she supports the roughly $5 trillion in tax increases included in the budget Mr. Biden released this spring.
Ms. Harris’s visit to New Hampshire will take her to political terrain that should feel far friendlier than it did when Mr. Biden topped the ticket. After the president’s disastrous debate performance, Democrats in New Hampshire and other reliably blue states — including Minnesota, New Mexico and Virginia — had started ringing alarm bells that Mr. Trump could be newly competitive. In 2020, Mr. Biden won New Hampshire by seven percentage points.
But those fears have largely dissipated since Ms. Harris replaced him on the ballot. Recent polls have had her up by roughly five points in New Hampshire.
The Harris campaign has also built a commanding advantage in its New Hampshire ground game. It has 17 offices around the state and over 100 staff members, far more than Mr. Trump.
And her appearance should provide the benefit of drawing news coverage in neighboring Maine, where the former president is seeking to win an Electoral College vote. Maine is one of two states that can divide their Electoral College votes between candidates, and Mr. Trump earned one vote in 2016 and another in 2020 based on strong support in one large voting district.
On Tuesday, Mr. Trump claimed on social media that Ms. Harris’s trip to New Hampshire reflected weakness, saying that the vice president knows “there are problems for her campaign” there because of the high cost of living.
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