Harris vows to take action to eliminate tip taxes for service workers

LAS VEGAS (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris pledged Saturday to take action to eliminate taxes on suggestions paid to workers in restaurants and other service industries, echoing a promise made by her opponent, Republican Donald Trump, and marking a rare instance of political overlap between the 2 sides.

Harris made the announcement at a rally on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where the economy relies heavily on hotels, restaurants and entertainment. Trump promised essentially the identical thing at his own rally in town in June — though neither he nor Harris likely will have the opportunity to fully follow through without action from Congress.

“I promise everyone here that when I become president, we will continue our fight for America’s working families,” Harris said. “That includes raising the minimum wage and eliminating tip taxes for service and hospitality workers.”

Trump responded on social media shortly afterward, writing that Harris “simply copied my NO TAX ON TIPS Policy.”

“The difference is she won’t do it, she just wants it for political purposes!” the previous president wrote. “It was TRUMP’s idea – she has no ideas, she can only rob me.”

Harris’ campaign later said that as president, she would work with Congress to develop a proposal that features an income limit and other provisions to stop hedge fund managers and lawyers from structuring their pay to take advantage of the policy. She would also press the proposal together with a proposal to raise the federal minimum wage.

Harris and her vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, arrived in Nevada as the newest stop in a five-state battleground where their party has shown renewed energy after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed Harris. The vice chairman is holding a fundraiser in San Francisco on Sunday that has already raised greater than $12 million, her campaign said, and retiring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is amongst those scheduled to speak.

More than 12,000 people were on campus Saturday, and before the event began, local law enforcement closed the event because people got sick waiting outside in 109-degree heat to get through security. About 4,000 people were in line when the entrances were closed.

Walz alluded to this in his speech, but turned it into applause, telling Nevadans, “don’t worry, we’ll be back often.”

As a part of the trip, Harris hopes to construct more support amongst Latino voters. In 2020, Biden defeated Trump by a slim 2.4 percentage points in Nevada.

The 60,000-member food service workers union announced its support for Harris. About 54% of union members are Latino, 55% women and 60% immigrants. The union also issued a press release supporting Harris’ call for a better minimum wage and “ensuring no tip taxes for service and hospitality workers.”

Harris made her promise to repeal the tip tax as a part of a broader call to strengthen the country’s middle class, echoing a theme that has been at the middle of Biden’s now-unsuccessful re-election campaign.

“We believe in a future in which we lower the cost of living for American families so they have a chance not only to survive but to thrive,” she said.

AP VoteCast present in 2020 that 14% of Nevada voters were Latino, and Biden won 54% of their votes. His lead amongst Latino voters was barely higher nationally, an indication that Democrats can’t take this group of voters for granted.

“There is an incredible energy among college students and community members coming together to support and listen to our next president, Kamala Harris,” said Imer Cespedes-Alvarado, 21. A political science major at UNLV, Cespedes-Alvarado is a first-generation American citizen who spent his childhood in Costa Rica before making the difficult decision at age 16 to return to the U.S. to seek higher opportunities.

The vice chairman also promised to address immigration, emphasizing the subject as she did the previous night at a rally in Arizona.

“We know our immigration system is broken, and we know what it takes to fix it,” Harris said in Las Vegas. She also backed a “pathway to citizenship” for some people within the country illegally and criticized Trump, who she said “talks a lot about border security but doesn’t do what he says.”

The vice chairman has tried in recent weeks to take the political offensive on a problem that Trump and top Republicans have ceaselessly used to criticize her and the Biden administration, a move Harris hopes will drive a wedge into Republicans.

Because the vice chairman’s portfolio within the Biden administration has included addressing the basis causes of migration, and since of a few of her comments before the 2020 election, many leading Republican voices have sought to portray her as weak on the southern border and enabling illegal immigration.

Trump himself said of Harris, “As border czar, she was the worst border czar in history, in the history of the world.”

The former president has proposed mass deportations if he returns to the White House, but nearly 7 in 10 Nevada voters said immigrants living within the United States illegally should have the opportunity to apply for legal status, according to a 2020 AP VoteCast report.

But politics aside, many Las Vegas rally attendees said they were thrilled by the brand new energy Harris and Walz brought to the race.

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Krista Hall, 60, and her husband Thaddeus Hager, 58, admit that they have not been as enthusiastic about an election since Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.

“This is just as electrifying, if not more so,” Hall said, noting that they’d attended several Obama rallies during that point. Hager said he was confident Harris and Walz would “win in a landslide.”

The Democratic ticket also made inroads into key Midwestern “blue wall” states over the past week: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Along with Nevada and Arizona, those states represent 61 electoral votes that might be obligatory to reach the 270-vote threshold needed to win on Election Day.

Brian Shaw, a Republican from northern Nevada, said Harris’ arrival at the highest of the ticket could make it harder for Trump to win because Biden was a “pathetic candidate” and there’s little time to expose the vice chairman’s “incompetence.” He said he attended a July 30 rally for Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance in Reno and located him “likable, capable, polished as a politician but not polished.”