Lower capital gains tax, cuts to food benefits: What Project 2025 could mean for your wallet in a Trump presidency

As the presidential election heats up, both parties are talking about Project 2025, a collection of policy plans developed by conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation in conjunction with more than 100 other right-leaning organizations.

If enacted, Project 2025 would bring major changes to Americans’ finances.

Aiming to “pave the way for an effective conservative administration,” the roughly 900-page “mandate” proposes an overhaul of the federal government and sweeping policy changes that would affect families’ taxes, savings and more. The Heritage Foundation launched the project in 2022 and published the policy collection in April 2023.

President Joe Biden and Democrats have pointed to Project 2025 as an example of what a second term from former President Donald Trump could look like. Biden has a page on his campaign website about the project, describing it “as a blueprint for Trump to implement.”

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However, in recent weeks, Trump has made statements distancing himself from the policy proposals.

“I know nothing about Project 2025. I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it,” Trump wrote on July 11 in a Truth Social post.

Yet while Trump may not embrace the treatise, its creators have certainly embraced Trump. Several people who formerly worked for Trump were involved in creating the playbook, and a recently resurfaced video from April 2022 shows Trump speaking at a Heritage Foundation gala about the group’s plans.

“This is a great group,” Trump can be seen saying, “and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

“As we’ve been saying for more than two years now, Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign,” a spokesperson from Project 2025 said in a statement. “We are a coalition of more than 110 conservative groups advocating policy and personnel recommendations for the next conservative president.”

“But it is ultimately up to that president, who we believe will be President Trump, to decide which recommendations to implement,” the organization said.

Project 2025’s spokesperson said they were unavailable to comment on specific proposals.

While some of the changes proposed in Project 2025 could happen via executive action, many would need congressional approval, which could prove difficult in a divided government.

Here are some of the plans that would affect household finances.

The project calls for a number of reforms to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, a federal government program that provides money for low-income people to buy food for themselves and their families.

Under one proposal in Project 2025, more recipients could face work requirements in order to receive their benefits. Another plan calls for closing the “loophole” in which people can enroll in food stamps if they’re already receiving another benefit, such as help through Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF.

The Biden administration’s move to increase food stamps for households during the pandemic is described as “a dramatic overreach” by the project writers. They also call on the next conservative president to “reject efforts to transform federal school meals into an entitlement program.”

These changes would have devastating impacts on families, said Salaam Bhatti, the SNAP director at The Food Research & Action Center.

“Cutting this vital component of our safety net would increase poverty-related, preventable hunger, result in poor health outcomes, increase health-care costs and lower academic performance among students whose families rely on SNAP to put food on the table,” Bhatti said.

Project 2025 calls for drastic cuts to the U.S. Department of Education’s loan forgiveness programs for federal student loan borrowers.

It would eliminate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness initiative, which provides debt cancellation to nonprofit and government workers after a decade of payments, and the Borrower Defense regulation, which offers a way for defrauded students to get debt relief.

The Biden administration’s new repayment plan for student loan borrowers, known as SAVE, would also come to an end under the project’s provisions.

“If Donald Trump is given the chance to implement this right-wing manifesto, it will wreak havoc on the economic stability of millions of student loan borrowers and their families,” said Aissa Canchola Banez, the political director for Protect Borrowers Action.

After 2025, dozens of provisions enacted by Trump via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA, are scheduled to sunset, including lower federal income tax brackets, a bigger standard deduction, boosted child tax credit and higher estate and gift tax exemptions, among others. 

While Trump has called for full TCJA extensions, Project 2025 proposes a “simple two-rate individual tax system” of a flat 15% and 30%. The latter would kick in around the Social Security wage base, which is $168,600 for 2024.

The plan would also eliminate most deductions, credits and exclusions, including tax breaks for state and local taxes and education.

If it were enacted, some taxpayers would pay more and some would owe less, depending on their current income, credits, deductions and exclusions, explained Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

The second phase could include some type of consumption tax, levied on goods and services, such as a national sales tax, business transfer tax or others, the plan outlined.

But historically, “consumption taxes get no traction in Congress,” Gleckman said.

Project 2025 would reduce the tax on capital gains and qualified dividends for higher earners. The top rate is currently 20%, and the proposal calls for 15%.

The plan would also eliminate the so-called net investment income tax, or NIIT, an extra 3.8% levy on assets once modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI, exceeds $200,000 for single filers or $250,000 for married couples filing together. Including the NIIT, top earners currently pay a combined 23.8% on capital gains.

If enacted, the proposal would represent “a substantial cut in taxes for people who make their money in investments,” Gleckman said.

Although retirement isn’t a primary focus for Project 2025, the plan calls for “universal savings accounts,” or USAs, with a yearly after-tax contribution limit of $15,000, indexed for inflation.  

The tax treatment would be similar to Roth individual retirement accounts, which offer tax-free withdrawals of earnings after age 59½, with some exceptions. By comparison, USAs would be “highly flexible” for investments, and gains could be withdrawn “at any time for any purpose,” according to the plan.

While some policy experts support USAs, others argue lower earners struggle with voluntary retirement contributions and likely wouldn’t benefit from the proposed higher annual limits. 

“The top one-third is well taken care of,” said Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “We don’t need to provide any more subsidized savings for that group.”  

In a July 9 post on X, Project 2025 said the plan does not advocate for cuts to Social Security.

But the mandate describes balancing the federal budget as a “mission-critical objective.”

With growing concerns over the solvency of the Social Security trust fund, “there’s no way those two statements are consistent,” Munnell said.

The Social Security trust fund has a projected depletion date in 2035, the annual trustees’ report showed in May. This could result in a benefit cut of at least 20% by that date without action from Congress.