President Donald Trump is considering a proposal put forward by some Republicans to raise the corporate tax rate to offset trillions of dollars in other tax cuts proposed by the White House, which would break from his 2024 campaign platform.
Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act extended tax cuts to more than 60% of all American filers and lowered the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. The individual provisions included in TCJA will expire at the end of this year without Congressional action. However, the corporate tax amendment was made permanent, and the president repeatedly floated lowering it again to 15% while campaigning last year.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed to the Washington Examiner on Tuesday that Trump has not decided if he supports a corporate tax hike to pay for the trillion-dollar burden his new proposed tax cuts would place on the federal budget.
“Look, I’ve seen this idea proposed. I’ve heard this idea discussed, but I don’t believe the president has made a determination on whether he supports or not,” she said during Tuesday’s press briefing.
After finally approving a budgetary framework last week, congressional Republicans are now trying to finalize legislation that combines the president’s priorities on immigration, slashing federal spending, and reforming the tax code. Senate Republicans have voiced support for addressing the president’s priorities in two separate pieces of legislation, while the president has urged Congress to pass “one big, beautiful bill.”
The nonpartisan Tax Foundation estimated that Trump’s ask, both the TCJA extension and the president’s proposals to eliminate taxes on tips, Social Security, and more, would cost between $1.5 and $5.3 trillion over the next decade.
Fiscal hawks in the House backed off their opposition to the budget resolution last week after securing assurances from Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Trump, and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to produce significantly more than $1.5 trillion in spending cuts to offset the new tax cuts. Republican leadership maintains that extending TCJA, a commitment of more than $4 trillion, would effectively cost nothing as it simply maintains the status quo of the tax code.
However, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and a member of the Senate Committee on Budget, has openly floated raising the corporate tax rate as a deficit offset. His office declined to comment Tuesday afternoon.
Axios reported in March that the president is also considering an income tax increase for the United States’s top earners.
The TCJA individual provisions that Trump hopes Congress can extend expire at the end of 2025. The Tax Foundation estimated that if they expire, 62% of filers will see their taxes increase the following year.
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You can watch Leavitt’s briefing in full below.
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