In Data: What does Kamala Harris’ wealth tax mean for America's richest?

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Presidential candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have endorsed vastly different visions for the U.S. economy and one particularly stark point of disagreement is how to treat the growing wealth of the richest Americans.

The top 1% of rich Americans controls a third of all the nation’s wealth – more than the combined sum owned by the poorest half of the population.

Harris has endorsed a number of proposals aimed at reducing that inequality, including raising income taxes on the rich, hiking corporate taxes and increasing the “capital gains" payable on the sale of any assets that have accrued value.

She has also voiced support for a "billionaire minimum tax", a policy first proposed by President Joe Biden in his 2022 budget, that would for the first time take aim at the accrued wealth of the very richest Americans.

It would tax "unrealized gains" for those worth more than $100 million at 25% – in essence, treating investments that increase in value as taxable income annually.

Amount and distribution of unrealized capital gains

Though it would only impact an estimated 10,000 Americans, it would target trillions of dollars of invested wealth every year and could raise an estimate $503 billion dollars, according to estimates made by the Biden administration.

In the past, the wealth would only be taxed when investments were sold, or left as inheritance. But the value of these nest eggs - or "unrealized gains" – now tops $8 trillion, from under $3 trillion a decade ago.

The revenue raised by the tax could be enough to fund a significant number of social programs, such as affordable child care and national paid family leave.

Distribution of unrealized capital income by race and age 

Opposition, however, has been fierce. According to the New York Times, some wealthy Kamala Harris supporters are pressuring her to abandon the plan. In a speech in September, Donald Trump said that “the tax on unrealized capital gains would decimate the U.S. economy." 

At campaign rallies across the U.S. Trump has said taxing unrealized gains would force small business owners to sell their business to pay tax bills.

Trump himself has not backed any specific wealth tax proposals and in 2020 his economic team said they wanted to reduce capital gains taxes.

How much money will be raised by the tax and what federal programs they could fund

(Reporting by Avi Asher-Schapiro & Diana Baptista; Editing by Amruta Byatnal, Lyndsay Griffiths, and Ayla Jean Yackley.)