Trump Pledges to Restore SALT Write-Off, Tax Break He Curbed (1)

Donald Trump said that he would revive the state and local tax deduction, a popular tax break for New Yorkers that the former president limited during his time in the White House.

“I will turn it around, get SALT back, lower your Taxes, and so much more,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, a day before he is scheduled to hold a rally on Long Island, New York.

The deduction is a particularly potent issue in New York City-area suburbs where the combination of high tax rates and high property values make the tax write-off especially valuable. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Trump’s signature tax law, capped the value of that deduction at $10,000, regardless of marital status.

Trump didn’t specify what changes he would make to SALT.

Former US President Donald Trump

Photographer: Eric Thayer/Bloomberg

Limiting the SALT deduction had broad support from Republican members of Congress — and not just because it helped offset other provisions to reduce tax rates and increase the standard deduction. Capping the deduction has had a disproportionate impact on jurisdictions that have higher taxes and property values — which tend to be dominated by Democrats.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, scoffed at Trump’s promise to reverse himself on the deduction limit.

“Trump was the one who took away SALT. It hurt many New Yorkers, including lots on Long Island,” Schumer said. “Now that he’s going back to Long Island for the first time he changes his mind? Give me a break.”

Trump has flirted with reversing course on SALT as far back as 2019, when he told a group of regional reporters at the White House he was “open to talking about it.”

“There are some people from New York who have been speaking to me about doing something about that, about changing things,” Trump said at the time.

Repealing the SALT cap would add $1.2 trillion to the cost of that tax law extension over the next 10 years, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Trump’s Long Island rally, at Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Uniondale on Wednesday, is off the beaten path for presidential candidates, who generally focus on the battleground states most likely to decide the election. But Long Island has taken center stage in the hard-fought battle for control of the US House of Representatives. Democrats are pouring resources into efforts to unseat GOP House members Anthony D’Esposito and Nick LaLota.

Forty-seven percent of high-income tax returns filed in Nassau County in 2021 had their state and local tax deductions capped, according to IRS statistics.

New York has voted Democratic in every election since 1984, and polls show Kamala Harris with a double-digit lead in the state.

But the former president, a native New Yorker, has long cast a quixotic eye on the state, especially after his conviction earlier this year in Manhattan on charges he falsified business records to cover up a hush-money payment to a pornographic actress.

“I’ll work with the Democrat Governor and Mayor, and make sure the funding is there to bring New York State back to levels it hasn’t seen for 50 years,” Trump said in his social media post.

Last month, Trump called New York Governor Kathy Hochul “very unpopular” and “the nastiest speaker” at the Democratic National Convention. Hochul has referred to Trump as a “fraud, a philanderer and a felon.”

(Updates with additional context in paragraphs 8, 9, 11, and 14.)

--With assistance from Steven T. Dennis and Zach C. Cohen.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Gregory Korte in Washington at gkorte@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Mario Parker at mparker22@bloomberg.net

Laura Davison, Mike Dorning

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