“I will turn it around, get SALT back, lower your Taxes, and so much more!” Republican nominee Donald Trump declared on Truth Social Tuesday. He’s probably really irked at the guy who signed the $10,000 limit on state and local tax deductions into law, which was… er, Donald Trump, back in 2017.
Under current law, an “individual’s deduction of state and local income, general sales, and property taxes is limited to a combined total deduction of $10,000, $5,000 if married filing separately.” Plenty of taxpayers in blue states pay considerably more than $10,000 in state and local taxes combined. It’s a high priority for Republican House members in blue states; most Republicans in red states see no point in efforts to change the limit on the SALT deduction.
I’ve flipped back and forth on the SALT limit. It’s easy to see why wealthier blue state taxpayers are an easy and satisfying target for increased tax revenues. But in the 2016 campaign, Republicans barely mentioned it on the campaign trail and didn’t mention it in the party platform, and blue state Republicans deserve tax relief, too. If you enact policies that spur tax-sensitive right-of-center voters to move out of blue states, you make life easier for the tax-hiking Democratic elected officials who remain.
Beyond that, Trump’s flip-flop again demonstrates that the 2024 presidential campaign is a bidding war – no taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no income taxes on Social Security. No one worries about the deficit, no one worries about the debt.