CHICAGO — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago Tuesday that he will not allow the Trump-era cap on state and local tax deductions to continue after its scheduled expiration at the end of next year.
Former President Trump and his Republican allies in Congress inserted a provision in the 2017 tax reform bill to cap state and local tax deductions at $10,000. That provision hit residents of expensive blue states such as New York, New Jersey and California with higher state and local taxes especially hard, but it raised a lot of revenue to offset the cost of Trump’s other proposals, such as cutting the corporate tax rate from 28 percent to 21 percent.
The issue of capping these so-called SALT deductions is especially potent on Long Island, a key swing area in New York that could help Democrats take back control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November.
“One of the issues that people care about on Long Island is state and local deductibility,” Schumer remarked when asked on Tuesday about Democrats' chances of winning races on Long Island.
“We Democrats, as long as I’m leader, when state and local deductibility expires, it will be gone,” he declared.
The Trump-era cap on state and local tax deductions is due to expire after Dec. 31, 2025.
Schumer also said he plans to end other Trump-era tax cuts and argued that the reduction of the corporate tax rate to 21 percent went beyond what even business groups expected, citing the Business Roundtable.
“To deal with our fiscal problems, we want to undo some of the Trump tax cuts, which went to the very wealthy,” Schumer said. “The amazing thing, the BRT, the Business Roundtable, asked to reduce the taxes to 25 percent in those 2017 negotiations.
“Even the business leaders I speak to expect it will go up,” he added.
Schumer, however, said he’s sticking with Vice President Harris’s pledge not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year.
“No one under $400,000 — we stick by that — should pay any increase in taxes,” he said.
