Billionaire investor Mark Cuban argued Thursday that Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris would not be taxed on her unrealized gains as president.
“Every conversation I’ve had has been that it’s not going to happen,” Cuban said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Cuban, who said he speaks frequently with Harris’ team, insisted in an interview with CNBC that he has no interest in taxing unrealized profits.
He cautioned, “I can’t speak for the vice president. She makes the final decision.”
Still, “I talk to these people three or four times a week, and we have back-and-forth conversations, and what they tell me is, ‘That’s not where we want to go.'”
“We have to find alternative sources of revenue,” Cuban said Harris’s aides told him. “And those alternative sources of revenue are to replace the labor income tax, which is not implemented in the Biden plan.”
Although Cuban is neither Republican nor Democrat, he was one of more than 100 venture capitalists who endorsed Harris for president earlier this summer.
Cuban’s comments could signal yet another break on tax policy between Harris and President Joe Biden, who dropped out of the race in July and endorsed Vice President Joe Biden as his successor.
Biden’s fiscal 2025 budget plan proposes a 25% minimum income tax on Americans with wealth exceeding $100 million.
Unlike current law, Biden’s budget would impose an annual tax on the wealthiest Americans for unrealized gains (the increased value of assets that are not sold). The plan has drawn opposition from Republicans and some Democrats as well.
Harris, who won the Democratic nomination four months before Election Day, has not explicitly abandoned her plan to tax unrealized profits.
But in a speech on Wednesday revealing more of her economic policies, Harris said she supports a “billionaire minimum tax.”
Harris is “taking the Biden plan as a starting point, but it’s not necessarily where she’s going,” Cuban said.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on Cuban’s remarks.
Harris, who is trying to appeal to moderate voters, reversed course on Wednesday with a Biden budget proposal that would raise the capital gains tax on households earning more than $1 million from 23.8% to 39.6%.
Harris’s plan would instead raise the top long-term capital gains tax rate to 28%, a figure the Harris campaign noted in a press release Wednesday that is “significantly lower” than the rate proposed in Biden’s budget.
“In her view, this approach strikes the right balance,” the campaign said.
Harris is laying out her policy plans ahead of her first and likely only debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump next Tuesday.
Disclosure: CNBC owns the exclusive off-network cable broadcast rights to “Shark Tank,” featuring Mark Cuban as a panelist.
