Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, was thrust into the national spotlight this week after former President Donald Trump officially tapped him to be his running mate ahead of the November election.
Vance, 39, grew up in poverty in rural Ohio and went on to attend Yale Law School before he worked as a venture capitalist in San Francisco – a rags-to-riches story that he chronicled in his 2016 memoir, "Hillbilly Elegy."
Just a few years later, Vance used some of his Silicon Valley connections from his venture capital days – including right-leaning billionaire Peter Thiel – to make a foray into national politics. Vance was elected to the Senate in 2022, with the help of more than $10 million in donations from Thiel.
Since then, he has cultivated an identity on Capitol Hill as a staunch ally of Trump and has embraced many of the former president's populist economic policies.
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The young GOP star has broken with the Republican establishment on many key issues, including taxes. Here is a closer look at where Vance stands on some key tax issues.
Vance is among a growing group of Republicans who support expanding the child tax credit, which provides money to low- and middle-income families.
After Trump expanded the child tax credit with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, families are now eligible for up to a $2,000 tax credit per child.
Vance has thrown his weight behind proposals that would further increase that credit, or something similar.
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In 2021, he tweeted his support for a proposal that would give a $12,000 tax credit to married parents who have children under the age of 13.
"Lot of ideas out there for how to directly help parents instead of giving them only one option. This is a good one," he wrote.
Earlier this year, Vance introduced legislation along with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., that would limit large corporate mergers between businesses that have a combined annual revenue of more than $500 million by targeting a tax break.
He also introduced a plan in 2023 that would impose a 35% tax on large university endowments worth more than $10 billion.
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The coming election is particularly consequential because whichever party voters select to control the White House and Congress next year will determine the fate of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Enacted in 2017 by Republican lawmakers and Trump, the law drastically overhauled the nation's tax code, including reducing the top individual income tax bracket to 37% from 39.6% and nearly doubling the size of the standard deduction.
However, those changes to the individual section of the tax code are poised to sunset in 2025, meaning that many taxpayers – including those who earn less than $400,000 – will face steeper levies if the law is not extended.
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Vance has been quietly critical of the law, which Trump pledged to make permanent if he is re-elected in November.
During a March interview with Politico, Vance praised certain parts of the bill – including the elimination of the SALT deduction, which he called "massively redistributive toward the lower- and middle-income brackets" – while criticizing other parts.
"Do I think that there was some more standard GOP tax fare, some of which I liked and some of which I didn’t? Yeah, absolutely," he said in March. "Do I think cutting the top marginal rate is like a high priority for me? No, I don’t."
Still, Vance admitted that if he had been in Congress during the time of the bill's passage, he likely would have voted for it.
