“Shark Tank” co-star Kevin O'Leary said Thursday that Vice President Kamala Harris' tax reform proposal would destroy the American Dream.
Harris plans to impose a 25% tax on unrealized capital gains on individuals with assets over $100 million and raise the corporate tax rate from the current 21% to 28%. According to According to The Wall Street Journal, O'Leary told Fox News' “The Story with Martha MacCallum” that Harris' plan would destroy American businesses and make it impossible for the US to compete with global companies.
“The idea of raising capital gains taxes and making America uncompetitive. You have to think about capital. America is the largest economy in the world and most foreign capital wants to invest in America because we're competitive. But all of a sudden, you get the G20 countries, countries that want to put $100 trillion of their national assets into infrastructure, to care about capital gains taxes, and then they care about corporate tax rates. Why do you want to punish them for being successful?”
“So ultimately, if we become uncompetitive in a lot of economies that compete with us and then all of a sudden we say, 'we now have the highest corporation tax rate and we're in the bottom quartile of our competition', then it's the same as when corporation tax was over 28% and companies started relocating to Ireland. We've tried this already and it didn't work… This is a really, really, really bad idea. It's incredibly bad policy,” O'Leary continued.
Kevin O'Leary says Kamala Harris' tax plan would destroy the American Dream pic.twitter.com/O2oSPnE053
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O'Leary said the capital gains tax policy would “punish American entrepreneurs” and force many to leave the country. (Related: 'Some explaining to do': Kevin O'Leary tells reporters Kamala Harris 'has to explain' her actual economic policy)
“We don't want to punish American entrepreneurs,” O'Leary said. “America's greatest export is not products or services, it's the American Dream. That's our greatest export. Don't ruin the American Dream! There's a reason people try to get into America through barbed wire. We don't want to put policies in place that try to get them out of America. That's the way I look at it, and I don't like it.”
O'Leary criticized Governor Harris' plan to impose a federal ban on so-called “price gouging” on food products, which has drawn backlash from accusations that it is tantamount to price fixing. O'Leary said the “un-American” plan is unworkable and has failed everywhere it has been tried.
“This is a very populist idea, and I think it's unworkable,” O'Leary said. “It will never get through Congress. It seems like she's throwing a lot of stuff at the wall, and I understand why she's doing it; she's encouraged by what she's seeing in the polls. But a lot of these proposals haven't been vetted by reporters in one-on-one interviews about how it would be implemented. This is an incredibly bad idea, it was tried in the United States in the '70s, and it hasn't worked in Venezuela, North Korea, anywhere. It's un-American.”
O'Leary criticized Harris. Plan Regarding a plan to build 3 million homes in the United States and offer first-time home buyers $25,000 in down payment assistance, the investor said it would be unrealistic for any state to lend to the federal government to build 3 million homes. If individuals selling homes were to hand over $25,000 per buyer, the investor said, prices would only rise.
“This idea is beyond ridiculous. It is the worst policy I have ever heard of and everyone in the real estate industry knows it is unworkable. This is the second idea I know of that will never take hold or pass Congress,” O'Leary said.
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