Jones is the One Candidate Who Can Restore the Full SALT Deduction
Opinion Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the author/producer’s interpretation of facts and data.
By James A. Shifren
Mondaire Jones is the candidate in the 17th Congressional District race who can provide tax relief to New Yorkers and help bring back the SALT deduction.
When he was in Congress, Mondaire Jones sponsored an effort to raise the deduction cap to $80,000 from the Republicans’ $10,000 limit. Republicans refused to pass Rep. Jones’ proposal. His opponent, Mike Lawler, in contrast, has proven that he cannot deliver relief on SALT. It is important for voters to be reminded that it was Lawler’s party who passed the SALT cap in the first place.
When Republicans capped SALT deductions at $10,000, they were taking direct aim at New York and other blue states with a punitive, punishing tax. They knew at the time exactly what they were doing – they were trying to undermine blue states’ economic viability.
Since 1913, when the federal income tax was established, Congress has allowed Americans to deduct from their income the amounts they had already paid in taxes to their state and local governments. To tax them on these funds that they had already paid out would have been patently unfair.
Thus, for more than 100 years – as long as there have been federal income taxes – this has been the accepted rule, allowing state and local governments to provide essential services such as police and fire departments, public schools, sanitation and public health and allowing their citizens to deduct the amounts they have paid for these services from their federal taxes.
Then in 2017, in President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, this settled rule was turned on its head and SALT deductions were capped at the arbitrarily low figure of $10,000. In doing so, former President Trump and Republicans brazenly used the federal tax code for the improper purpose of punishing higher tax blue states who did not vote for him and rewarding those who did.
And yet this thumb in the eye to blue states was actually even more insidious under the surface. It sought to create a destructive, negative feedback loop for blue states, wherein high-wage earners, discouraged by their new inability to deduct their high state and local taxes, would leave their state for lower tax havens, such as Florida and Texas, thereby creating an increasing burden on blue states to provide their high level of services to all their citizens.
As a born and bred New Yorker, I was outraged by the Trump Administration’s weaponization of the tax code against my state and other blue states. This naked overreach to use taxes as a way to punish entire states was wholly unprecedented and struck me as nearly the acts of a petty dictator. This is Mike Lawler’s party that passed this punishing cap, and if voters were to send him back to Washington, he would do nothing to end the SALT cap.
In 2017, before the cap, more than 230,000 Westchester residents and over 67,000 residents in Rockland County used the SALT deduction to lower their tax burden. A vote for Mondaire Jones is a vote for a legislator who has a real chance to end the SALT cap and restore New Yorkers’ full deduction.
A vote for Mondaire Jones is, therefore, a vote for lower taxes and also a vote for the economic health of New York State, something we should all support.
James A. Shifren is a resident of Greenburgh.
Examiner Media – Keeping you informed with professionally-reported local news, features, and sports coverage.
