Where the 2024 Presidential Candidates Stand on Construction’s Top IssuesWhere the 2024 Presidential Candidates Stand on Construction’s Top Issues

As the 2024 presidential election nears, the platforms of the major parties’ candidates have emerged — and there’s no shortage of policy stances that affect construction execs.

Below is a look at where former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris — and, in some cases, their respective running mates, Ohio Sen. JD Vance and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — stand on issues impacting construction.

Taxes

Kamala Harris

Harris would extend many of 2017’s lower personal income tax rates, now set to expire at the end of 2025, but only for households making less than $400,000, or about 97% of Americans, according to the Wall Street Journal. 

She supports approximately $5 trillion in tax increases, modeled on Biden’s most recent budget, that would make the top tax rate on some incomes as high as 44.6%. Harris also favors raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, while bumping up the corporate alternative minimum tax — now set at 15% of financial-statement income for large companies — to 21%. 

Other tax proposals from Harris that could impact construction would be a $25,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers — a measure that could also benefit homebuilders — as well as a $50,000 rolled-out tax deduction for business start-up costs.

Donald Trump

Trump wants to make permanent the lower tax rates for personal income passed in 2017 — the signature legislation of his presidency. That’s significant for construction, since 84% of building firms are taxed as pass-through entities — the companies are effectively taxed via their owners’ personal income tax. Trump’s proposals, if passed, would keep those rates from reverting to higher, pre-2017 levels. 

For construction firms structured as corporations, Trump wants to lower taxes again. The 21% corporate tax rate, which was reduced from 35% during his administration, isn’t set to expire. But Trump has said he would cut it further to 20% or even 15% for companies that produce their goods in the U.S. 

He has proposed import tariffs and ending Biden’s clean energy subsidies to help pay for the cuts.

To read the rest of this extensive roundup from Construction Dive click here.