Kamala Harris places income limit on ‘no taxes on tips’ plan

Vice President Kamala Harris is considering limits on her proposal to end the taxation of tips, exploring new details for her version of an idea first pushed by her Republican rival, former president Donald Trump.
Harris’s advisers have discussed only exempting taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers who earn $75,000 per year or less, according to three people familiar with the campaign’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

While the plan would exempt tips from federal income tax, tipped earnings would still be subject to payroll taxes, the people said, because those taxes fund Social Security and Medicare. Harris’s plan would also cap the amount of income workers could claim came from tips.


The internal discussions about these potential guardrails — which have not been finalized and may still become part of Harris’s public proposals during the campaign — reflect a desire among Democratic experts to refine a policy idea many of them criticized when Trump introduced it in June.