SALT

Man with all this great DOGE work and massive savings when is my income tax going to be eliminated again?

I live in NJ where my local and state taxes are very high - well over the current $10k max Fed income tax deduction. I would benefit, but I do get the argument that we should be pressuring our state and local govs to lower taxes, not expecting the Fed gov to make up for it with a high SALT.

A SALT tradeoff was inevitable in order to get this bill done. With such a thin majority they need every Republican vote. Increasing the SALT deduction is a top priority for Republicans from states like NY, CA and NJ.

In order to be fair, equitable and diverse the SALT deduction should be no more than ZERO. Why should poor people pay for rich people's expensive housing and taxes? Local and State taxes have no national benefit at all and deserve zero consideration. Personally I would benefit, but as an American and not a Progressive i oppose the poor paying for me.

As a Floridian I don’t pay state income taxes, but I pay a lot more than $10K in property taxes. I tend to agree with Skibum that I don’t think SALT deductions benefit the public good. But I would trade the deduction for some sort of upper limit or graduating scale on property taxes. This is the opposite of a regressive tax. I have many friends and neighbors who are paying well in excess of $100K in property taxes.

^ also a Floridian, the only reason why my taxes are fairly reasonable is because I have been the owner of record, since 1994, neighbors with smaller houses than mine are paying close to 14K and one particular house has an annual tax bill of 23K, which is ridiculous, and the reasons for our taxes being so high is due to the Florida legislation granting exemptions to homeowners in parcels deemed the agricultural reserve, and allowing greater density of homes in exchange for giveaways by the builders.

^ Do you pay an additional tax each year for the privilege of owning the same car you have owned for 10 years like we do? Every state with no income tax has very high real estate taxes. back in the day when Americans ran the show around here, we passed Prop. 2 1/2. It limits property tax increases to a max of 2.5% per year. Without it we'd be fucked.

We passed something similar the homestead property tax cap, problem is that when the property is sold, the assessed value skyrockets to reflect the sale price, there is a loophole in which real estate that is held in a corporation, gets sold without changing the name of the owner of the deed, but they are cracking down on that.

^BTW trying to understand the relevance of your question, of course your vehicle has to be reregistered annually.

I just know from selling my used cars to my brother in-law in Virginia that they tax you based on the value of you possessions including cars.

I'm against this subsidy for wealthy blue-staters (like myself).

^Kind of funny that the whiny bitches bitching about corporate welfare and poor people getting screwed are the same ones who want to screw poor people and make them pay welfare to wealthy blue staters. I bet these assholes tip no more than 5%.

The standard deduction for 2024 is $14,600 for single and $29,200 for married jointly with SALT capped at $10,000 for itemized deductions. Any increase in the SALT cap should have an accompanying increase in the standard deduction.

SALT caps are just another form of wellfare for high income states to subsidize low income states. The SALT deduction should effectively be unlimited. More specifically though, SALT caps aren't targeting John Mara or Larry Ellison. Instead they target average everyday upper middle class couples that worked their ass off in grad school/professional school or starting a small business. Via the graduated income tax + rich state to poor state subsidies they are already paying their fair share.

Also, everyone talks about "high tax states," but that is mostly (not entirely) BS. People in high income/high quality of life/cost of living states are hitting the cap simply due to higher incomes.

Not to mention the bullshit around phasing out student loan interest tax deductions at pretty low income levels. Uni +grad school years are effectively earning negative income in order to earn a higher income later. That negative income should be available to use as credits against higher earning years.

More generally, why does the whole system have to be (1) so complex, and (2) setup to make it really hard to reach financial security (across all swaths of the middle class, not just those in high income careers in really expensive parts of the country).

^ Why so complex? Because DC loves to use a maze of deductions and credits and incentives to engineer their perfect society. If we were to drastically cut down deductions and loopholes, we would not only pull in more money, it would be clear as day who was cheating.

^arent some those deductions available even to people only making 100k or even 60k? Even a dancer could potentially set up an llc and begin deducting expenses like gas, car maintenance, makeup, shoes… etc? Also i know a lot of people who voted democrat yet used every deduction they could.

They dropped it to $10k to punish the blue states but forgot the red states also have very high property taxes. $20k sounds about right What they are totally missing as usual is the high income tax avoidance scams, that is where the money goes.

Kind of funny to see all the lefties wanting poor people to pay them welfare. No state and local taxes should be deductible at the Federal level under our system of governance. I earn more because of where I live, so I should also have to pay more.

===> "^BTW trying to understand the relevance of your question, of course your vehicle has to be reregistered annually."

What ski was talking about is what they call an automobile excise tax, which is an annual property tax levied by cities and towns on the value of each person's vehicle(s). It is separate from state-level registration fees and typically much higher. When I lived in two different New England states, I had the pleasure of paying several hundred dollars per year for the privilege of simply owning vehicles.

One of the many things I enjoyed about moving to Florida is having the government the fuck out of my vehicle ownership. Excise taxes and annual inspections were two burdens that I was very happy to see go. Florida charges me $90 per car for a 2-year registration, all of which can be done online in moments. Easy-peasy.

@25: And to be clear, those excise tax bills and inspection requirements in the nanny states have teeth. If you don't deal with them, you registration and/or license will be suspended.

Between my wife's car and my car, we paid $700 in excise taxes, for two cars we already own and have owned and that is not the cost for the $35.00 annual inspection, nor for registering the car either. Just another Blue state ass fucking, together with the "temporarily increased state tax rate", which is 5.2%, down from 5.5%, but was 5% before the democrats lied about their temporary tax increase. The fucking government is 100% of the reason we are doomed if we ever get rid of cash.

@RD
Not aware of the excise tax, I still believe it is smarter to require vehicles to pass an annual inspection, I doubt very much that you get the problems in St. John’s County, that we deal with here on a day to day basis. You must be way out in the sticks, if you’re not dealing with jalopies on the roads and unlicensed drivers.
Have you driven I95 down here, because it’s a real shit show just like the Jacksonville area. Wait until some house painter, in an open pickup truck cuts in front of you and a bunch of empty paint cans splatter your nice new vehicle or some idiot moving from one apartment to another balances a couch on his roof with his buddy holding it down, until he reaches 40 MPH and that couch becomes airborne and lands on your head.

@25: It's easy for us to have an elitist attitude about car inspections, but it's a tremendous burden to lower income people.

What makes it worse is the corruption that it inevitably breeds. In my youth, some of those skeevy ass inspection stations would find reasons to fail you, but of course would be happy to fix the problems for a price and then re-run the test again. They don't usually play those games as much with older people who own nicer cars, but if you're a kid driving an older car then it can become a real shakedown.

Between this and the excise taxes, I went through many stretches during my college years driving unregistered and/or on a suspended license because I couldn't afford some ass fucking (nice term ski) that the state was imposing on me. But I needed a car since I had to get to work and also couldn't afford the rents in Beantown, where I went to school.

^ Great so when some unlicensed illegal, driving a jalopy in the rain, runs into your vehicle when you're picking her up from some school or event and (God Forbid) kills her or leaves her paralyzed for life, you can call me an elitist, that will certainly make you feel better.

^ That's bullshit hypothetical speculation 25. I've seen no evidence that people driving "jalopies" are any more prone to serious accidents than anyone else. Indeed those cars often can't drive as fast as nicer cars because of engine, radiator and other problems. I also see no connection between people doing stupid things (open paint cans, holding a couch on a roof, driving like maniacs) and vehicle inspections.

Any time we insert government into our lives, there is a cost. All too often it is the poorest among us who pay the steepest price, but we all pay a price in terms of ceding control to others.

I say this as someone who drives plenty in Jacksonville and sees plenty of old cars. They aren't the ones barreling down 95 at 100 mph or flipped over on the side of the road in an accident. All too often it's someone driving something with a powerful engine who thinks he's invincible.

@RD
Just out of curiosity Rick do you take contrarian positions just to troll, because, that's the stupidest statement you've made in a long time. Tell us how some person who can't afford to repair a car, likely rides on bald tires with bad brakes , isn't prone to more serious accidents than anybody else.

I get it you're an anarchist, you hate rules, too fucking bad, the only way we can share this country that my taxes as well as yours pay for, and use the infrastructure that we share, is with a few rules,

Sure rick let's ignore all the rules that might affect you, but enforce the rules you think are important. I'm not going to comment further this is a stupid argument.
Which rules should we enforce, tell us how you live your life ceding control to no one.

Well 25, bravo at least for believing your own hypothetical speculative nonsense enough to double down on it. But that's just what it is. IME guys with more power at their disposal are far more likely to be in those accidents. Now I've seen plenty of old cars broken down on the aide of the road, but relatively few in a serious crash.
I am hardly an anarchist. But any time we pass an intrusive rule because some anal retentive elitist paranoid jackasses think it's a good idea, it has costs. The worst of those costs is often born not by the aforementioned anal retentive elitist paranoid jackasses, but by the undesirables who these anal retentive elitist paranoid jackasses want targeted by the rule. Usually that's our poorer population.
You believe that the tradeoff is worth it. I do not, for the many reasons I have already made amply clear. Some guys, like you, need the government to assume a high degree of control to make you feel safer. I don't need that to feel safe and overall prefer a much lighter government hand, free of police constantly harassing our poorest people for not meeting administrative government burdens.

^ Without expounding on what you said, that's pure unadulterated bullshit, if you believe that, you're an elite idiot!

^ You may want to google "elite" Two Bits. I'm definitely the "man of the people" in this little exchange. 😉

Mr. SkiBum, the rationale behind deducting state and local taxes is simply that as the Gov is already taking that portion of your income from you, it is unavailable for investment or consumption. Fairly similar to not taxing unrealized gains until they become realized.

@RD
Elite means the best, and as an idiot you’ve succeeded beyond our wildest imagination.

^^ We're talking about the Federal Government, not state and local. They are not the same entity and the taxes go for different things. Why should people in the wealthier states get to deduct their ridiculous state and local taxes, paying less for the military for example, (I live in Taxachusetts) than people in poor states, with shitty state and local services?

So, people in MA (which by the way had an average tax burden for years despite the reputation, but has recently shot up to #13) don't pay less for the military. To pick an easy example: school teachers in CT pay much higher federal taxes than those in Arkansas because they are in high cost of living and high income states. They are going to pay a lot more both in absolute dollars as well as percentage, which is especially true if their spouse is in a high paying field, which is much more likely in CT and AK. On the flip side, French Quarter (/listing/2012) sounds better than most CT clubs.

You're ignoring the differences in schools and services that people in poor states are forced to support. Get more pay more. Salt should be zero.

@Ski: Here in FL, we have no state income taxes and a great school system. We just make degenerate gamblers pay for it. 😁

When I say great school system, I mean now the 10th best K-12 system (and rising) and the Number 1 public university system in the country as ranked by U.S. News and World Report. Our colleges are so good and so cheap now that many of our valedictorians and salutatorians don't leave the state to go to college - they go to UF (now ranked 30th top college in the country). Even better, many of the kids attending FL universities get a free tuition ride thanks to Bright Futures.

All possible because of a state constitutional requirement that 100% of state lottery proceeds go to the education system. The whores otherwise known as politicians cannot divert it, earmark it, borrow against it or otherwise engage in the fuckery often seen in so called "dedicated" or "earmarked" funding. They have some say in how it gets divided up (universities, K-12 schools, college scholarships, school choice vouchers, virtual statewide classroom programs, etc.) but that's it.

Sometimes it's not about spending more money, but about spending what money you do get more effectively.

^ We have more than enough tax money; but it is usually stolen by the one-party Government here in the people's republic. I don't mind paying taxes to my local Government because it works, but every cent I send to the State and Federal Government is less satisfactory than it would be to burn it. The State uses our tax money to pay their voters off by pretending they are "contractors".