Former President Donald Trump’s proposals for targeted tax breaks are resonating with battleground-state voters, who overwhelmingly approve of his ideas to eliminate taxes on tipped income and retirement benefits.
But Vice President Kamala Harris has countered Trump’s proposals with her own no-taxes-on-tips plan along with other tax cut ideas, which has coincided with her gaining voters’ trust on economic issues, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll in the seven states most likely to decide the election.
Both Trump’s proposal to end all federal taxes on tipped income, and Harris’ more targeted version for hospitality workers, have won broad bipartisan support with a majority of swing-state voters, the poll found.
Trump and Harris have been engaged in an arms race of economic proposals, many of which are designed to woo key groups of swing-state voters. Both candidates made their no-tax-on-tips pledge in Nevada, a state with the largest proportion of its workforce in tip-dependent industries like food service and lodging.
The poll, conducted Aug. 23-27, shows the proposal is popular across all seven states, which include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The statistical margin of error is one percentage point across the seven states.
Harris’ version, which would eliminate federal income taxes on tips but keep them on payroll taxes that support the Social Security and Medicare programs, was less popular that Trump’s, by 6 percentage points.
The question in the Bloomberg poll did not identify which presidential candidate was proposing which policy, and the list of proposals was rotated so that neither candidate’s policies got an advantage.
Trump’s campaign pledge to eliminate all federal taxes on Social Security benefits was the most popular of the six economic proposals surveyed. More than eight in 10 voters said they strongly or somewhat supported the idea. Among voters age 65 and over, the number was nine in 10.
The two campaigns have also put forward competing plans to expand the child tax credit, a President Bill Clinton-era tax break originally targeted at middle-income taxpayers with children.
The Trump campaign proposal, as outlined by running mate JD Vance, would increase the current $2,000 credit to $5,000 per child, regardless of income. And it would allow lower-income parents to receive the credit as a government benefit even if they pay no taxes.
The Harris plan would start out bigger — $6,000 in the first year — but then would be phased down to $3,000 after age 7. Only lower- and middle-income families would be eligible.
Swing-state voters preferred the details of the Harris child tax credit plan, with 65% supporting it compared to 60% for the Vance plan. Both Democrats and Republicans were more likely to favor the vice president’s plan.
Harris’ recent proposal to give $25,000 in assistance to first-time home buyers was the least-popular policy surveyed, but still won the support of 57% of swing-state voters. But it was also the most polarizing of the proposals: About twice as many Democrats supported the policy as Republicans. Voters say they they trust Harris more than Trump on housing costs, an issue where the former president once had an edge over President Joe Biden.
Overall, 46% of swing-state voters said they trust Trump more on taxes than Harris, who’s trusted by 44%. But Harris has greatly improved the Democrats’ standing on the issue, narrowing a deficit that was as high as 16 percentage points when Biden led the ticket.
Trump’s proposals — and, to a lesser extent, the competing plans from Harris — would come with a budget-busting price tag. A Bloomberg review of all Trump’s tax proposals estimates that they would add more than $10.5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. Harris’ would add about $2 trillion, which she’s said she’d offset with higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.
“These policies, on paper, are pretty popular,” said Eli Yokley, US politics analyst for Morning Consult. “The long-term effects of them I don’t think voters think about.”
While Harris is still putting out details of her tax plans, many of them mirror policies previously proposed by Biden.
Many of those Biden policies were also generally popular with swing-state voters. A March survey found that seven in 10 voters supported a Biden plan to raise taxes on those making more than $400,000 a year, while only half supported his efforts to raise corporate tax rate.
Trump’s proposals to raise tariffs — 10% across-the-board, plus a 60% tariff on all Chinese imports — won the support of half of swing-state voters.
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