Members of Congress launched a “bipartisan SALT coalition” aimed at educating the public about the need to restore the full State and Local Tax deduction, which would cut taxes for many property owners on Long Island and in high-tax areas nationwide.
The SALT deduction was limited to $10,000 in 2017 when President Donald Trump signed into law a $1.5 trillion overhaul of the federal tax code. The plan was authored by Congressional Republicans.
The effort to repeal the limit, backed by both Democratic and Republican members of Congress, emphasized the outsized effect of the 2017 law on middle-class property owners throughout the country.
Some Democrats, including Rep. Thomas Suozzi (D-Glen Cove), said they would not support President Biden’s infrastructure bill unless it fully restored the SALT deduction.
“The purpose of this caucus is to really educate people about how the SALT cap is placing so much pressure on people, and we want to relieve that high pressure to help the families that are getting crushed by the SALT cap,” he said.
Suozzi said the goal is to “educate people how the middle class in my district or in many of the districts here, is very different from the middle class in other districts in the country,” he said. “If you make $100,000 or $120,000 or $150,000 in my district, that’s middle class. In other parts of the country, that’s seen as being upper-income.”
Now, with a Democratic President and the House and Senate under Democratic control, a growing number of House members have pushed to immediately restore the full deduction.
Outside of the U.S. Capitol Thursday, Republican and Democratic members of Congress from New York, New Jersey, and California, where property taxes are among the highest in the nation, expressed support for the proposal.
The 2017 decision by Republicans was done to punish “blue states” where property taxes are disproportionately higher, Democratic lawmakers said.
Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) said the issue affects middle-class taxpayers, including teachers, firefightersd, cops, and small business owners.
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) said the caucus’ goal was single-focused and would disband after the SALT limit was repealed.
“It’ll be the most short-lived caucus in the House of Representatives,” she said, drawing laughs from other members of the group formed Wednesday.
Local officials in New York expressed support for the deduction’s full restoration.
Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone, a Democrat, on Thursday led a virtual news conference with leaders of Nassau and Westchester Counties.
Bellone said, “The result of that [2017] tax act was the largest federal tax increase, essentially, on middle class homeowners in history.”
Nassau County Executive Laura Curran, a Democrat, said the 2017 law was a “gut-punch’ to New Yorkers, who are effectively getting “taxed on our taxes.”
Westchester County Executive George Latimer, a Democrat, said local officials can make the case to current Congressional leaders, who did not have control of Congress when the tax code was enacted. “We are now trying to make this argument to different decision makers,” he said.
Key to their case is explaining the increase in taxes over the past two years.
Now, “people have a sense of the actual impact of this,” he said, noting officials have a “much more powerful case to make.”
