GOP/POLITICS/TAXES: “A day after announcing their ambitious tax plan, Republicans debated scaling back one of their largest and most controversial proposals to pay for lower tax rates: repeal of the individual deduction for state and local taxes.
Faced with the potential for defections by House Republicans from high-tax states such as New York and New Jersey, Republicans are exploring ways to satisfy those lawmakers without backing off the lower tax rates they promised…
The fight over the state and local deduction, with more than $1 trillion at stake over a decade, is an early signal of the bruising battle ahead for Republicans trying to pass a tax bill that hasn’t garnered Democratic support and that faces narrow GOP margins in the House and Senate. It is the most obvious case of a bloc of pivotal lawmakers holding a specific concern, but it won’t be the only one…
More than 90% of filers with incomes over $200,000 claim the deduction, according to the Tax Policy Center. Overall, 38% of the deduction’s value goes to California, New York and New Jersey, which have 21% of U.S. households, the center said.
Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said he is listening to lawmakers from high-tax states and is open to further discussions…
Republicans don’t intend to produce a detailed plan for weeks. A high-level framework released Wednesday was the product of six top negotiators from the House, Senate and Trump administration, and top policy makers said the state and local tax provision was one of the main deductions they were targeting for elimination.”
-Richard Rubin and Siobhan Hughes, “Republican Tax Plan Quickly Hits First Hurdle,” The Wall Street Journal online, Sept. 28, 2017 06:42pm