Rep. Chris Smith issued the following statement after the House voted on H.R.1, the tax bill: Today I voted “no” on H.R. 1 because while I believe that Americans are overtaxed and need relief, this bill would not provide that relief for New Jersey residents; it would, in fact, be detrimental for many of them.
The bill rolls back or even eliminates certain itemized deductions, and almost half—47%—of the taxpayers in my district itemize, claiming an average of $31,981 in deductions. These deductions are used by many New Jersey taxpayers, and thus their modification or elimination is seriously problematic for me.
Foremost among these changes that I opposed was the partial elimination of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction for income, sales, and property taxes, capping this deduction from federal taxes at $10,000. New Jersey has one of the highest rates of tax filers using the SALT deduction, with over four in ten taxpayers (42%) using it; the average SALT deduction in my district is $18,355. Many New Jersey taxpayers, including homeowners who pay some of the highest property tax rates of any state, could see their taxes go up.
New Jersey residents already pay one of the highest tax rates per household to the federal government, but see one of the lowest returns on federal spending of any state. We need tax relief, but we must have relief that is not comparatively unfair to the taxpayers of New Jersey.
What Mr. Smith should do is get to work on lowering our state and local taxes to typical levels people are paying elsewhere. Why are we paying the highest state taxes in the country? Where is the money going to?
Smith did the right thing to preserve the American polity based on families and home ownership. The Republican tax increase favors single people and rentals by doubling the standard deduction erasing the century old policy of encouraging home ownership and child bearing, the bulwark of any republic.
The Democrats will now emerge as the party of American and family values.
Well said, WestSider!
agreed with comment #1.
Also, what Mr. Smith was leaving out is that most frum working people get hit by the AMT (because we have large families with lots of deductions). Once we get hit by the AMT we dont get to deduct SALT anyway! This bill eliminates the AMT!!
Good for frum working people!
Taxes won’t go up because they raised the joint filer deduction by 12000 and per a child by 1000 so if the average is 18000 salt than 10000 cap plus 12000 joint even with no children that’s a net gain of 4000
Anyway the problem is salt so let’s get our local politicians to lower our taxes and there would be no problems
Except of course NJ is Democrat and they only know how to raise taxes which they will be doing now that they have a Democrat governor
To teacher
What are you talking about?
The bill also doubles the joint filers deduction and doubles per child deduction
Our salt is so high because of Democrat politicians in Trenton
NJ is a home-rule state. Local taxes are high because we have 564 municipalities and several hundred school districts, each with its own town manager, superintendent and police chief.
It has nothing to do with political parties but the history and constitution of the state. The people of NJ do not want any form of statewide rule or consolidation.
They removed the personal and dependent exemptions which will have a serious impact to large families (even with the $2000 child tax credit). Also, AMT was only eliminated for Corporations, not individuals (please correct me if I/m wrong)
Mr Smith should have negotiated tuition vouchers. Worth more to the average family than any other item in yhe Bill.