Raising the SALT Cap Is Supposed to Benefit Whom, Exactly?
High-income taxpayers and high-tax state governments would be the main beneficiaries.
Persistent agitation from elected officials seems on the verge of bearing political fruit.
Photographer: Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that President Donald Trump signed into law in December 2017 imposed a $10,000 limit on the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted on a federal income tax return. Since then, this so-called SALT cap has been the subject of a constitutional challenge from New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut that was turned back by the federal courts, and persistent agitation from elected officials in those and other affluent high-tax states — where many people pay far more than $10,000 in state and local taxes each year — that after more than seven years now seems on the verge of bearing political fruit.
Republican lawmakers from New York, New Jersey and California traveled to low-tax Florida last weekend for a chat with the man who gave us the SALT cap, and it went well. President-elect Trump is “fully supportive of raising the cap,” Representative Mike Lawler of New York reported afterward. “He really communicated that he feels for how unaffordable the taxes are for our constituents,” said fellow New Yorker Nick LaLota.