Residents of high-tax states like New York and New Jersey will no longer be able to bypass a $10,000 limit on federal deductions for state and local taxes.
The Treasury Department on Tuesday finalized regulations that would bar individuals in high-tax states from creating charitable funds in exchange for state tax credits – a maneuver developed as a workaround for changes to the treatment of state and local taxes under the 2017 tax reform.
The Republican-backed law capped the amount of state and local tax – or SALT – payments that individuals could deduct from their federal taxes at $10,000. As a result, states like New York, New Jersey and Connecticut tried to find ways to minimize the economic pain felt by residents from the cap.
“The regulation is based on a longstanding principle of tax law: When a taxpayer receives a valuable benefit in return for a donation to charity, the taxpayer can deduct only the net value of the donation as a charitable contribution,” the Treasury Department said in a statement.
Democratic lawmakers have repeatedly issued dire warnings about the limit, saying the measure primarily hurts Democratic-leaning states that tend to have taxpayers with higher incomes and higher home prices.
The controversial limit was a key revenue raiser in the $1.5 trillion tax code overhaul, which slashed tax rates for corporations and individuals.
House Democrats have been working on a plan to increase the deduction, but any bill would likely be dead on arrival in the Senate.
