This tax break cap can cost you money in Bellingham. And it isn’t changing anytime soon
Deducting state and local taxes from federal returns has been highly popular in the Bellingham area.
The break is particularly well used in Washington’s 1st Congressional District, represented by Democratic Rep. Suzan DelBene. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that 39.6% of 2016 returns from the eastern side of the Bellingham area took the deduction, which averaged $8,694.
In the 2nd district, represented by Democratic Rep. Rick Larsen, 30.8% took the break, deducting an average of $6,546.
But for at least another year, those breaks are going to be limited.
Since last year, there’s been a $10,000 per return limit on how much state and local tax can be deducted. The Democratic-run House last month passed legislation to eventually do away with that cap. DelBene and Larsen voted to repeal the limit.
The bill’s progress has since stalled. Asked if he would consider the ideas in the House bill, Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican who heads the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, said flatly: ”No.”
“The economic answer is this tax bill has been so good for the economy that we should not be bringing uncertainty about the tax bill by even talking about it,” he told reporters Wednesday.
The 15 most affected congressional districts, and 78 of the top 100, have Democratic congressmen, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
Critics charge all this was by design, as Republicans were eager to help people in places friendly to them.
“The states affected are generally blue. They were singled out,” said Frank Sammartino, Tax Policy Center senior fellow.
A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta earlier this year found that the 10 places gaining the least from the income tax cuts are all Democratic-leaning. California topped the list, which also included Washington, Vermont, Oregon, D.C., Hawaii, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey and Maine.
Republicans wrote the 2017 tax bill that put limits on the deduction, and got no Democratic support. GOP lawmakers argued that capping the deduction would be offset by other tax breaks, notably a reduction in rates.
Grassley said Wednesday that while the bill did not target Democratic states, it did address higher-tax states.
“From a political standpoint, our goal was to make sure that the national taxpayers weren’t subsidizing the big spending in a lot of mostly liberal states,” he said.
Without naming such states, he called them ”big population states where they don’t care a whole lot about what they spend or what they tax the higher-income people.”
Putting limits on state and local tax deductions is a way of limiting state and local taxation because it helps “help ensure federal tax policy doesn’t reward states and cities for raising their taxes sky high,” said Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Nebraska, a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee.
Data show that most people generally are paying less federal income tax because of the 2017 legislation. But in many places where the bigger state and local deduction was unavailable, the tax cut was often less than in other congressional districts.
The House bill would have closed the gap. It doubled the deduction for married couples this year, and then removed the cap entirely for 2021 and 2022. It would have raised the top tax rate from the current 37% to 39.6%. The bill passed 218 to 206 on a largely party-line vote.
The most affected congressional district was on the north shore of Long Island in New York, represented by bill sponsor Rep. Tom Suozzi, a Democrat. Next were two northern New Jersey districts. In all three districts, at least 54% of tax returns took the SALT deduction in 2016, and the average deduction was at least $23,478.
Least affected by the cap was West Virginia’s 3rd District, where 12% of returns had the SALT deduction. The southern part of the state is represented by Rep. Carol Miller, a Republican. Eleven of the least affected congressional districts are in Texas.
It’s unlikely anything will be done to change the current system. Democrats’ best hope is that the cap becomes a big campaign issue, and they plan to push it hard.
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-California, put the campaign pitch starkly, “It was an assault on the middle class.”
This story was originally published January 13, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
.jpg)