New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo (D), has provided another example of the dishonesty of Progressive-Democrats as he continues to whine about his State’s excessive State and local taxes no longer being deductible above a high maximum on Federal income tax forms.
He said Trump intentionally targeted states whose populations oppose him by a majority.
And
You pay your state income tax, they then tax your state income tax payment. First time ever.
No, the first is misleading. The SALT cap was aimed at capping Federal tax deductions generally in order to level tax requirements, at least a little, across all income levels. That only a few States have SALT set so high that their rich residents routinely exceed the $10,000 threshold is an outcome of those few States having such excessively high taxes; it has nothing to do with where the deductibility limit is set.
The second is an outright lie. Only New York, et al., are taxing their citizens’ State income; the Feds are simply not allowing wealthiest to deduct all of their State and local taxes from their Federal income tax bill. Not allowing a deduction is not the same as taxing.
On the other hand, if there is double taxation; it’s the States applying the second income tax on the same income. It’s their choice to come in behind the Feds’ income tax and apply a second—their own—income tax to that same income.
The States as double-taxers is demonstrated in two ways. One is the seven States that don’t have—don’t need and don’t want—an income tax on their citizens’ income, with an eighth State kicking its State income tax to the curb as of 2021, and the two that only tax dividends and interest payments.
The other is the number of States whose income tax requirements require submission of the Federal income tax data (not income data) as the basis for the States’ application of their own income tax.
And a double-taxation mitigating factor: most of those States that do apply their second income tax to the Feds’ income tax don’t have their SALT set so high that the payments aren’t fully deductible from the Federal income tax. Only a few States have their SALT set usuriously high—and that’s the deliberate choice of the men of those States’ governments.
And Cuomo’s childish intransigence demonstrates why removing a favorable treatment is so hard. “But you promised!” wails the toddler – and so wail the nominal adults who have come to believe they are entitled to receive because … well, they never really have a because. Just the assumptions built into that word, “entitled.”