• Former Vice President Biden said he wouldn’t raise taxes on households earning less than $400,000 a year.
  • “Nobody making under $400,000 would have their taxes raised. Period, bingo,” Biden said in an interview on CNBC.
  • Biden is seeking implement new taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations, including a rollback of the 2017 corporate tax cuts signed into law by President Trump.
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The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden promised on Friday that he wouldn’t raise taxes on people earning less than $400,000 each year.

Asked about the speed he would implement proposals to raise taxes on the wealthy and large businesses, the former vice president doubled down and said tax increases would be enacted only for the richer segment of the public.

"Nobody making under $400,000 would have their taxes raised. Period, bingo," Biden said in an interview on CNBC. "Let's get people back to work."

Biden slammed the 2017 Republican tax cuts, which scaled back the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% and experts say added around $2 trillion onto the federal debt. He said the lost revenue could have been used to finance the federal government's response to the pandemic.

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"Imagine if we had that $2 trillion now as we go into, God willing, a recovery which is a long way away as I see it right now," he said.

He also tore into Amazon and said the company should begin paying their taxes. Yet Biden swung back at the notion he would govern as someone aiming to dramatically remake the economy.

"I have a record of over 40 years, and I'm going to be Joe Biden. Look at my record," he said.

Biden has proposed a slew of tax hikes to cover new federal spending on healthcare, education, and infrastructure. His campaign estimates the plans would raise $3.4 trillion over a decade.

Elements of his policy menu include increasing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, a partial rollback of President Donald Trump's tax cuts. He's also seeking to tax capital gains and impose a new 12.4% payroll tax on high-earners and employers to shore up Social Security.

Biden's promise echoes a past pledge by Barack Obama during his first presidential campaign in 2008 to not increase taxes for households earning under $250,000, limiting tax hikes except for the richest Americans. Obama repeated it again during his 2012 presidential run.

Biden's declaration defines the middle class more broadly, since he's shielding more high-earners from additional taxes compared to Obama. The median household income in the US is $63,179, per the Census Bureau.

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The presumptive nominee also tried casting blame on the Trump administration for its management of the pandemic, which has drawn significant criticism as the US death toll surpasses 93,000 people.

"His slowness is costing lives and costing jobs and costing our ability to rebound," Biden said.