Disparate Impact

High-tax States, principally States run by Progressive-Democrat regimes, don’t like the tax reform’s cap on State and local taxes.

The governors of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut said on Friday that they would sue the federal government to overturn the new US tax law, saying the measure unconstitutionally discriminates against Democratic-leaning states.

This is just the raw sewage of disparate impact being spread across a tax bill—never mind that the tax reform is uniformly applied across all States, across all businesses and individual taxpayers.  Never mind, too, that if some taxpayers, if some taxing jurisdictions, are impacted differently than others, it’s solely a result of the conscious individual, business, and State and local government choices.  At least when “disparate impact” is imputed to matters of race, the alleged victims have no choice in their position in the differences alleged.

Here’s an example of the foolishness and disingenuousness of the suit:

The legal action will argue that the new tax law’s cap on state and local tax deductions infringes on states’ rights and amounts to double taxation[.]

The States have no “right” to a Federal income tax deduction.  Beyond that, the cap can’t possibly represent double taxation; the only tax here is the SALT applied by those State and local jurisdictions.  Not being able to deduct a fraction of that (or any of it, come to that) from a Federal income tax bill is no tax at all.

One hopes the Federal trial judge dismisses the suit out of hand and strongly sanctions the governments and Attorneys General of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut for bringing such a frivolous suit.  Failing that, one hopes the Supreme Court, where the suit will end regardless of the trial court outcome, itself firmly chastises the State governments and Attorneys General.

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