Economy Ranks as #1 Issue. Trump vs. Harris Tax and Economic Plans. Doug Flynn, CFP on NewsNation

- So I said we're gonna get detailed. We will right now, news nations. Joe Khalil has new reporting for us on the Harris and Trump policies and our guy Doug Flynn from Flynn Zito has analysis on the policies. Alright, Joe, let's start with you. So first thing I'll do, I'm gonna put up just a screen of the Harris policies. A lot of people know, you know what she likes to focus on, but again, she hasn't been questioned. That's been the rub on Harris on these policies. But the tax credit, the how they get, it's the 25 grand for home buyers. The ban on price gouging and hard to define. We've talked about this a lot and eliminate the tax on tips. But as you start your reporting, Joe, why don't we start with taxes. Taxes are always really, really interesting to people. I know we have a comparison between the two sides on tax policy, Trump campaign, Harris campaign, what have you, what have you found? - Yeah, so this is what it looks like side by side. So the Harris campaign now, and this is according to the Wall Street Journal actually saying that her plan is to increase taxes on the top 1% of earners. Right now they're paying 39. This would be a 5% hike to 44. Compare that to Donald Trump's plan. Top 1% of earners would actually get a tax cut by 2% from 39 down to 37 corporate tax rate at the moment, 21% Kamala Harris' plan would raise it seven points to 20%. You see their Trump's plan actually cuts the corporate tax rate and then there's this minimum tax. And for those at home, what that means is if you're someone who's a really high earner, you, you can often find loopholes in different ways to bring your own tax burden down. Right? So a lot of those people, multimillionaires, billionaires, end up paying a lot less. This would be you have to pay a minimum of 25% no matter what kind of loopholes you found. There is none, nothing like that on the Trump side. Now, the way that these campaigns are messaging this as Kamala Harris is pointing to these tax plans moving forward now saying watch for who you are fighting for. She says our campaign, we're fighting for the middle class. The other guys, they are the ones who are fighting for and protecting the top 1% corporations. On the other side of that, you've got the Trump campaign now saying, look, if she's gonna be taxing corporations higher, who's gonna end up bearing that burden? Right? It's not gonna be the corporations 'cause they're gonna funnel that cost down to consumers. It's part of their argument that things are already high price wise, they're gonna get higher under Kamala Harris according to the Trump folks. And the real thing, the challenge that they they're now having to do is to remind everyone she's the incumbent vice president. So you look at prices from 2020 to now, yes. Seeing things have significantly gone up. Food prices, 20% housing prices. Right. So those are the things they're trying to remind voters of. Yes. - Okay. A couple things here Doug that I think are interesting. First of all, the minimum tax show talks about is politically popular. 'cause that really does hit just, you know, people even richer than you, right? This is that SOS so, so not a lot of people complain about it. Whether it's good policy or not is a different discussion. However, I was looking at the numbers. You would say, well she's for higher taxes, she's a democrat. That is partially true, but her plan as far as I read it doesn't necessarily bring in more revenue or much more. What it does do is it changes who's responsible, right? And right. Something on capital gain, like capital gains to me is interesting. A lot more people are in the stock market in their own investments of 401k and that kinda thing. She really wants to hike that. Right? So talk about the tax plans here and compare them and how you see the, the impact of them being felt. - Yeah, I mean basically if just letting the Trump tax cuts expire means that about two thirds of the people are going to pay more. So if she's going to not have people that make over $400,000 pay more, that means basically you have to be for a good amount of the Trump tax cuts when they're gonna, it's gonna be interesting to see how they spend that one. But the real troubling part is the capital gains tax, even though they're saying it's only gonna be on the higher income earners that are gonna pay more and the amount they're gonna pay is the most that anyone's paid in 40 years. Yes. And the pro, the problem with that is, I've been doing this long enough to know that when capital gains tax rates were much higher in the early nineties, people sat on money they didn't course sell things of. Yeah. And so, you know, they always do these, the straight line math that says if we just raise the capital gains tax rate from here to here and only put it on the rich people that we're gonna make all this other revenue. Yes. And the fact of the matter is you're not gonna see any portion of that at all. And so what does that mean either A, they're gonna have to start pushing it down to people that make less or we're gonna balloon our deficit even more and borrow even more money because you're just not gonna get the revenue that they're all doing right now in the calculations of how much they're gonna raise. - Yes, agreed. It's all about incentives. We all think about, well you know, many people think about it at the end of the year you look, where are my investments? What, you know, what's a gain? What's a loss? Oh boy, I better not, I got a tax hit on that. Now the tax hit would be a lot bigger. Right? That affects a lot of people. Yes. Even people not day trading or whatever you wanna call it in the stock market. It affects a lot of just normal people. Alright Joe, on the Trump plan, lemme put up the Trump plan on the screen if we can. You know, trump's interesting economically because the tax cuts is what gets a lot of the attention. Investor class loves that, but the tariffs traditional Republicans don't love. But it's a big part of this economic plan. Joe, what would you say about your reporting on the Trump plan? - Yeah, it is. And look, this is something that he has advocated for even when he was president the first time as high tariffs and it did strike a certain chord with classic more traditional conservatives who are just vehemently opposed to doing the tariffs. But there is this sort of populous streak at JD Vance embodies this too that the Republican side says you need to find ways to hold China accountable. It's one of the very few slivers of our current politics that is still bipartisan now is trying to hold China accountable in some ways and being tough against this is a way for them to do that. So I think it's almost a political plus rather than even an economic one. - We're coming up at the top of the hour, we always check our top stories in the market close, which we'll do. But I wanna give Doug a chance, we'll go over a little bit on this and then we'll continue with our top stories to respond to that because I, you know, I was talking to Mark Andy as you know, the economist is on here and every now and again and his basic take was on it Trump's probably better for the stock market, right? But he likes Harris. His plans for, for other things actually thinks inflation might be lower and, and growth might be higher. I don't know. But again, Trump likes using the stock market as a gauge. Thoughts on the Trump plan? - He does well and I think just about tariffs for a moment. I keep thinking about how bad tariffs are. Yet the Harris Biden ad administration kept all the tariffs in and actually raised some. So I, I don't know that if they were really that bad, they should have gotten rid of them all. So I perhaps another 10% might push us over the edge, but what if they're wrong? They've been wrong about that as well. And so, you know, and the thing with with XY is he, when he came out and he said, Hey listen, if Trump gets in and does 100% of what he says he is gonna do, he's gonna be really bad. Right? Well, where's the other side of that? Let me see what happens if, if Harris gets in and does 100% of what she's going to do, let's do a head-to-head comparison on that. I haven't seen that. And so overall you can, you can say one might be better than the other. I think we're gonna hit a point where too much tariffs is no good. But I don't think they've convinced anybody that what we currently have is actually bad. Even though everyone on both sides said that it was going to be. But I did ask - Him that last time. Again, he thought stock market trump the o, some of the other issues like inflation advantage Harris. But I'm not sure if he's done as much work as he did on the other side on that. Thank you both Doug and Joe. Good discussion on the biggest issue when you talk to voters.