Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” on Thursday that President Joe Biden “would probably phase in” his proposed tax increases “slowly over time.”
Yellen said that the tax hikes would likely come as part of a larger package of legislation sometime in 2021, which would “involve spending and investments over a number of years” on areas like education and infrastructure, according to the financial network.
“And probably tax increases to pay for at least part of it that would probably phase in slowly over time,” she added.
Biden campaigned on raising the corporate tax rate up to 28%, which would still leave it below the 35% rate that it was at before the Republican tax bill in 2017 reduced the corporate tax rate to 21%.
Yellen noted in January that Biden “has said that eventually, as part of a larger package that would include significant spending and investment proposals — not now while the pandemic is really depressing the economy — that he would want to repeal parts of the 2017 tax cuts that benefited the highest-income Americans and large companies.”
The secretary also said on Thursday that the Biden administration’s proposed coronavirus relief package will help bring back the jobs lost during the pandemic.
“We think it’s very important to have a big package [that] addresses the pain this has caused – 15 million Americans behind on their rent, 24 million adults and 12 million children who don’t have enough to eat, small businesses failing,” Yellen said.
“I think the price of doing too little is much higher than the price of doing something big. We think that the benefits will far outweigh the costs in the longer run,” she added.