Joe Biden says he will not raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 per year. But a Tax Foundation analysis confirms what others have discovered – Biden’s tax hikes could affect the middle class after all.

According to the Tax Foundation’s Taylor LaJoie, there are the economic costs of tax hikes:

When Biden says he will raise taxes on only those earning over $400,000, he is saying his tax law will target only those high-income taxpayers. Economists, however, trace the economic impact of these taxes past the person writing the check.

As Doug Holtz-Eakin recently pointed out, “it simply is not economically possible to segregate the impacts on the high-income from everyone else.” The rich purchase items from others, some not as rich, and from businesses that employ workers across the income spectrum. The corporate tax falls partly on workers in the form of lower pay, acknowledged by the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. Treasury, Likewise, the individual income tax that is paid by pass-through businesses falls partly on employees of those businesses.  

Those are the extended costs of tax increases. But there are some other Biden proposals that could hike the average taxpayer’s bill, including a change in the tax benefits of retirement accounts, plus this:

…the Biden-Harris campaign proposes multiple reforms to firearm regulation, including an apparent expansion of the number of firearms subject to the National Firearms Act (NFA), which imposes a $200 tax on the registration of each NFA weapon. As a result, certain gun owners would see their tax liability rise, regardless of their income.

Taxes aren’t raised or lowered in a vacuum. They have knock-on economic effects that must be taken into account. It’s the same with regulatory and other changes. There’s more at work, and at stake, than just the numbers in the headlines.