Tag: SALT cap

Understanding the State and Local Tax Deduction (SALT)

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.cato.org/blog/understanding-salt

Excerpt:


The SALT deduction is still distorting tax policy even in its limited form. For example, the poorly conceived temporary $4,000 bonus deduction proposed in the Tax Cuts for Working Families Act, part of the Republican economic tax package, is the result of SALT politics. The proposal attempts to give additional tax relief to taxpayers concerned by the SALT cap.

As initially proposed by House Republicans in the lead‐​up to 2017, the correct policy is to repeal the SALT deduction entirely. The $10,000 cap was a political compromise necessary to get enough votes for the bill. Raising or lifting the cap significantly reduces revenue, making it harder to extend or expand the tax cuts when they expire at the end of 2025.

Author(s): Adam N. Michel

Publication Date: 22 Jun 2023

Publication Site: Cato

States Help Business Owners Save Big on Federal Taxes With SALT-Cap Workarounds

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/states-help-business-owners-save-big-on-federal-taxes-with-salt-cap-workarounds-11653989400

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Excerpt:

Business owners are likely saving more than $10 billion annually in federal taxes through state laws that circumvent the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of state data.

The state laws blunt the cap’s effect on owners of closely held businesses such as law firms, hedge funds, manufacturers and car dealerships, while workers earning wages generally can’t take advantage. The strategy, now available in 27 states, converts business owners’ personal income taxes into deductible business taxes that escape what is known as the SALT cap on state and local tax deductions.

Much of the money flows to high-income people in California, New York and New Jersey, while those in Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Connecticut are likely saving hundreds of millions of dollars as well. It isn’t just a phenomenon in high-tax Democratic states. The proliferating workarounds mark a rare case where a state-tax policy trend has been swift, national and bipartisan, and Utah, Georgia, Arizona, South Carolina and Kansas now have similar laws.

For states, approving the workarounds has been easy, because their residents benefit and state tax collections are barely altered. For business owners, the chance to lower federal tax bills is attractive, and industry groups are lobbying in the states that haven’t yet enacted workarounds.

Author(s): Richard Rubin

Publication Date: 31 May 2022

Publication Site: WSJ

SALT change likely to be cut from bill, say Senate Democrats

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/591378-salt-change-likely-to-be-cut-from-bill-say-senate-democrats

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Excerpt:

Senate Democrats say a proposal to raise the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions, a top priority of Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), is likely to be cut from the revised Build Back Better Act.   

Senate Democrats who were involved in negotiations over the bill before Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) blew it up last month say there’s simply not enough room for the expensive tax change, which Republicans argue would benefit wealthy suburban households in blue states.

….

Pulling the SALT fix out of the legislation also will make it tougher to pass the legislation through the House, where last week three Democrats from New York and New Jersey insisted they won’t support any bill that doesn’t raise the $10,000 cap former President Trump imposed on SALT deductions in 2017.   

….

“The problem that the Democrats have here is not only does SALT relief cost a lot of money, but it is extremely regressive,” Gleckman said. “We looked at a number of versions of this. We looked at an $80,000 cap, we looked at a $25,000 cap, we looked at a $400,000 phaseout … and there are real significant differences, but all of them are extremely distributionally regressive. All of them largely benefit the highest-income people, no matter how you do it.”  

Middle-income individuals and families hardly see any benefit because the vast majority of them do not itemize deductions.   

Author(s): Alexander Bolton

Publication Date: 26 Jan 2022

Publication Site: The Hill

Amid SALT tax standoff, here’s where Illinois senators stand: The latest D.C. Memo

Mary Pat Campbell

Link:https://www.chicagobusiness.com/juice/salt-deduction-cap-durbin-duckworth-restate-call-repeal-dc-memo#new_tab

Excerpt:

The Illinois congressional delegation is thus far standing firm in its bid to repeal the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions—albeit strictly along party lines.

It’s become a potentially divisive issue for Democrats—just as Republicans intended when the cap was instituted as part of the Trump tax cuts at the end of 2017. But it’s also proved to cut both ways.

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A 2018 report issued by Chicago-area Democratic representatives, using data compiled by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, found that 500,000 metro households felt the pinch to some extent, including 71,000 of 170,000 homeowners in the 6th District, where Casten unseated Roskam and is now trying to hold off Rep. Marie Newman after redistricting.

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But repealing the cap has threatened to open a divide between Democratic progressives and traditional liberals. For progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont it’s also a fairness issue, in that if he insists that the richest Americans pay more in taxes, that also goes for Democrats in that group. He’s suggested repealing the SALT cap only up to household incomes of $400,000, citing President Biden’s like-minded campaign pledge that he would not raise taxes on those earning up to that amount.

Author(s): Ted Cox

Publication Date: 26 Jan 2022

Publication Site: Crain’s Chicago Business

The tart truth underlying SALT repeal arguments

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/18/tart-truth-underlying-salt-repeal-arguments/

Excerpt:

According to the Tax Foundation, just 13.7 percent of filers itemize their deductions — a prerequisite for deducting state and local taxes. Only at the top 10 percent of the income distribution do even a majority of taxpayers itemize. But among the top 1 percent of taxpayers, 92 percent do, and of course, their higher marginal tax rates make each deduction more valuable.

So it is these taxpayers whom the SALT deduction primarily benefits. According to Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, households in the top 0.1 percent of earners would receive an average benefit of about $150,000, while those in the middle would get closer to $15. Repealing the caps would cost about $350 billion by 2026, and an estimated 85 percent of that revenue would end up in the pockets of the richest 5 percent of Americans.

You can probably think of many better uses of taxpayer money than giving a tax break to the most affluent people in the most affluent parts of the most affluent states in the country. Unless, of course, you are someone who would benefit from a larger SALT deduction. As, I admit, I would.

Author(s): Megan McArdle

Publication Date: 18 Sept 2021

Publication Site: Washington Post

Tax Me, I’m From New Jersey

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/regressive-tax-new-jersey-salt-cap-reconciliation-2017-cuts-and-jobs-act-aoc-biden-11632167030

Excerpt:

I am no billionaire. But like Mr. Buffett, I am willing to take one for the team. So as Democrats in Congress come under pressure to roll back the $10,000 cap on the federal tax deduction for state and local taxes, or SALT, this long-suffering resident of New Jersey offers his own Buffett-like message:

Don’t do it. Make me and people like me — those who choose to live in high-tax states — pay our full, fair share of federal taxes.

Such an approach accords well with what Mr. Biden has been saying about taxes and the wealthy. In his most recent remarks about his Build Back Better plan, the president said he’s “tired” of the rich not paying their “fair share.” And he attacked the 2017 tax cuts passed under Donald Trump as a “giant giveaway to the largest corporations and the top 1%.”

But that’s exactly who would benefit most from any expansion of the SALT deduction. According to the Tax Policy Center, 57% of the benefits of eliminating the cap on the SALT deduction would go to the top 1% of filers. The same researchers likewise reckon that the top 1% would get an average tax cut of more than $35,000 — against just $37 for middle-class taxpayers.

Author(s): William McGurn

Publication Date: 20 Sept 2021

Publication Site: WSJ

Heaping on the SALT

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.city-journal.org/will-biden-restore-the-state-and-local-tax-deduction

Excerpt:

The Biden administration will need practically every Democratic representative in Congress to vote for its proposed $2 trillion package of tax increases, which would be the largest in 54 years. To gain that support, the president may have to season his legislation with some SALT. The bill, which raises corporate taxes and boosts capital-gains levies, among other things, doesn’t restore the full federal deduction for state and local taxes that Donald Trump’s 2017 tax-cut bill capped.

Democrats in key high-tax blue states, including New York representative Tom Suozzi and New Jersey representative Josh Gottheimer, have been complaining that Trump’s tax bill placed an undue burden on their states’ residents. Some have vowed not to support any tax legislation unless it reinstates the full SALT deduction. The problem: federal data show that restoring the deduction would overwhelmingly profit rich taxpayers—and lawmakers in many blue states have already raised their own levies on the rich.

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Subsequent data have shown that the SALT changes fall heavily on the rich, while the vast majority of taxpayers in high-tax states have benefited from the Trump cuts. An analysis of 2018 New York tax returns found that the number of residents subject to the higher rates of the Alternative Minimum Tax declined to just 0.2 percent of all returns, down from 5.9 percent in 2017. Thanks to the doubling of the standard deduction, the number of New Yorkers itemizing their deductions shrank by nearly two-thirds that year, according to an Empire Center report. A recent report by the left-of-center Brookings Institution found that 57 percent of the benefits of restoring a full SALT deduction would go to the top 1 percent of households, providing them with an average tax cut of $33,000.

Author(s): Steven Malanga

Publication Date: 17 Sept 2021

Publication Site: City Journal

SALT Cap Confounds House Democrats Crafting Taxes for Biden Plan

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-09/salt-cap-confounds-house-democrats-crafting-taxes-for-biden-plan?sref=H58UC22s

Excerpt:

House Democrats continue to search for a way to satisfy lawmakers who want to scrap the deduction limit on state and local taxes without losing progressives wary of a tax cut that would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy.

The budget blueprint Democrats passed this summer instructs lawmakers to include some form of SALT cap relief in a tax-and-spend plan of up to $3.5 trillion.

A full repeal would be costly and politically difficult to pass with razor-thin margins in both chambers. But a coalition of lawmakers from New York, New Jersey, and other states with high tax rates continue to insist that is what it will take for them to back the legislation.

…..

Suozzi is one of the leaders of the “SALT Caucus”, an alliance of more than 30 lawmakers who want to roll back the $10,000 deduction limit established in the Republican-led 2017 tax law. While they argue that the cap unfairly targets Democrat-dominated states and encourages people to move to Florida and other low-tax states, progressives counter that expanding the deduction shouldn’t be a priority in a social spending bill because the lion’s share of the benefit would go to the wealthy.

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That [2019] bill passed the House, but 16 Democrats voted against it, including New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has described a full repeal as a “gift to billionaires.” Democratic leadership is dealing with a much narrower majority this Congress and can’t afford to lose that many votes with no Republicans expected to support the reconciliation package.

Author(s): Kaustuv Basu

Publication Date: 9 September 2021

Publication Site: Bloomberg

Taxing Tuesday: The SALT Cap Battle Continues

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://marypatcampbell.substack.com/p/taxing-tuesday-the-salt-cap-battle

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Excerpt:

 ….these representatives are doing exactly what they should be doing: representing the interests of the people of their districts.

This helpful site provides all sorts of statistics by Congressional district.

According to their data, Tom Suozzi’s district, NY-3, has a median household income of $120K. Gottheimer’s district, NJ-5, has a median household income of $110K.

….

Of the top 50 congressional districts by median household income, they are represented by 42 Democrats and 8 Republicans.

The top 17 districts are all represented by Democrats. You have to get to #18 to get to your first Republican.

Nancy Pelosi’s district is at #4. That must burn her britches. Do better, San Franciscans!

Suozzi’s district is at #5.

Gottheimer’s district is at #16.

Author(s): Mary Pat Campbell

Publication Date: 10 August 2021

Publication Site: STUMP at substack

The SALT Deduction Has Always Been Hard to Defend — And to Kill

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/663D98E8EB142B3B852581C6005A9982

Excerpt:

The SALT provision of the 1862 tax disappeared with the income tax itself in 1872. It returned, on paper if not in practice, when the income tax was briefly revived in 1894 (before being struck down by the Supreme Court in the 1895 Pollock decision). But when the income tax returned for good in 1913, it brought the SALT deduction back for the long haul.

Over the decades, the deduction evolved to reflect its fiscal environment. When states began to rely on sales taxes, the deductibility of those levies in the federal system was made explicit. The introduction of the standard deduction in 1944 also reshaped the SALT deduction, reducing its scope dramatically (and shifting the distribution of its benefits up the income scale). Later revisions in the 1960s and 1970s modestly curbed the deduction, but it remained largely intact through the 1980s.

Its survival, however, did not reflect any sort of elite consensus that the deduction was a good idea. Indeed, policy experts were increasingly hostile to it. In earlier decades, the deduction had escaped careful scrutiny, perhaps because it was widely perceived to be necessary in a system marked by high marginal rates; many experts believed that absent the deduction, the combination of federal and state income taxes might have approached confiscatory levels.

Publication Date: 27 October 2017

Publication Site: Tax History Project

State Pass-Through Entity Taxes Let Some Residents Avoid the SALT Cap at No Cost to The States

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/state-pass-through-entity-taxes-let-some-residents-avoid-salt-cap-no-cost-states

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Excerpt:

But PTE taxes create inequities based on type of income. For example, because these states now favor pass-through income over wages, a partner in a law firm can be effectively exempt from the SALT cap while an executive assistant or associate in the same firm remains subject to the deduction limitation. A doctor who is an employee of a corporation is barred from fully deducting state and local income taxes while a partner in a medical practice making the same income is exempt from the federal cap for these taxes.  

Because the rules differ across states, businesses need to consider where partners live and where business income is generated. For example, non-resident partners might not benefit from the credits in their home state. Like New York, some states of residence allow credits against the taxes these partners owe from other states. But that isn’t always the case.

Keep in mind that these PTE taxes may be just a temporary fix. Congress may consider changes to the SALT cap in coming legislation. And the cap, along with all other individual tax changes in the TCJA, is scheduled to expire at the end of 2025.

Author(s): Kim S. Rueben

Publication Date: 24 June 2021

Publication Site: TaxVox at Tax Policy Center

How States Are Letting Small Businesses Avoid The SALT Cap On Their Tax Returns

Mary Pat Campbell

Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizfarmer/2021/07/01/how-states-are-letting-small-businesses-avoid-the-salt-cap-on-their-tax-returns/?sh=7ef5a29127c5

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Excerpt:

Colorado recently became the 14th state to enact the new workaround, which allows (or in Connecticut’s case, requires) pass-through businesses to pay state income taxes at the entity level rather than on their personal income tax returns. For small businesses like partnerships, declaring that income as a business instead of passing it through to their individual tax returns means the state taxes paid on that business income don’t count toward their SALT cap.

The new mechanism is called a pass-through entity (PTE) tax, which is exempt from the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction that was part of President Trump’s 2017 tax reform. For business owners in high property tax states like New Jersey and Connecticut, it’s a critical change because it allows those taxpayers to deduct more of their local taxes from their other personal income.

Author(s): Liz Farmer

Publication Date: 1 July 2021

Publication Site: Forbes