How High-Tax States Are Trying to Evade the GOP Tax Overhaul
Taxes

How High-Tax States Are Trying to Evade the GOP Tax Overhaul

Flickr/Sam Valadi

Officials in New York, New Jersey, California, and Maryland are going to the mat against the White House, reworking their tax codes to ease residents' pain from new limits to federal deductions for state, local and property taxes.

Starting this year, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the recently enacted federal tax overhaul, caps payers' deductions on their property, state and local income taxes (SALT) at $10,000.

In 2015, the average New Yorker's SALT deduction was more than $22,000. In New Jersey and California, those deductions were around $18,000, while Marylanders claimed an average deduction of nearly $13,000.

Previously, there was no limit on deductions for these local levies. The change means many residents in these states — and many others — will now pay more to the federal government.

"We're attempting to come up with ways to negate and blunt the harsh and unfair Republican tax policy," said Kevin de Leon, the Democratic leader of the California State Senate.

The new tax law does away with most itemized deductions and doubles the standard deduction to nearly $12,000 for individuals and $24,000 for married couples who file jointly. The law also eliminates personal exemptions.

To combat the new SALT deduction cap, politicians are proposing some creative concepts.

Some of the ideas include granting a charitable deduction — which remains uncapped — after filers pay property taxes. Another idea does away with income taxes and applies a statewide payroll tax to be paid for by employers — which is deductible to them.

"The whole intent is to ensure that you get the benefit of the deduction you would otherwise lose," said Joseph Bankman, the Ralph M. Parsons Professor of Law and Business at Stanford Law School.

The White House has expressed its disapproval.

"I hope that the states are more focused on cutting their budgets and giving tax cuts to their people in their states than they are in trying to evade the law," said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at a press briefing this month.

However, Robert Mujica, New York's budget director, said it's impossible for the state to not react.

"What Washington did to New York was say 'We're going to basically change the laws entirely and upend your system, oh, and by the way, don't make any changes to adjust to it'," he said.

Here's how some states are working to combat the new tax law.

California

In early January, California Senate leader de León introduced a bill that would allow residents to pay some of their state taxes to the California Excellence Fund, a state charity. In turn, taxpayers would be able to deduct the amount of their charitable contribution on their federal returns.

So if, say, a San Francisco resident's SALT taxes were $15,000, they could pay the first $10,000 as normal, and then contribute the remaining $5,000 of their state tax bill to the California Excellence Fund as a charitable donation. That would then make their total SALT taxes deductible.

"It's pretty easy," said Brian Galle, a law professor at Georgetown University who specializes in taxation. "It follows a mechanism that many taxpayers have done every year."

What might require adjustment is that people would have to figure out their taxes months earlier than they're used to. That's because people would need to know their state tax bill and make that charitable contribution before the end of the year to receive the benefit.

"It means sitting down with an accountant in December instead of March," Galle said.

Educating Californians about the system would be a major part of the plan, de Leon said.

Maryland

A similar concept is cooking in the Old Line State, where legislators announced they would release three tax bills as a response to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The package of bills aims to address the loss of state and local tax deductions by allowing residents to make charitable contributions to public schools, counteracting the effect of the $10,000 limit on SALT deductions.

Further, state legislators want to maintain personal exemptions on state tax returns. These exemptions have been dropped from the federal tax code.

Legislators also want to decouple Maryland's estate tax system from the federal framework so that the state's estate tax exemption is around $5 million – as opposed to the new federal estate tax exemption of about $11 million per individual.

New York

Absent of any changes, the state estimates that New Yorkers would pay an additional $14 billion a year in taxes.

Earlier this month, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered the Department of Taxation and Finance to craft ways for the state to respond to the GOP tax bill. The department emerged with a slew of proposals to reshape New York's taxation.

"All of them are designed to give back to New Yorkers what the federal government took away," Mujica said.

The first proposal basically mirrors California's plan. Residents would contribute their SALT taxes beyond the $10,000 cap to a state charity, and therefore make their entire bill eligible for deduction.

The other major proposal would shift income taxes to payroll taxes — or from employees who can no longer deduct taxes to employers who still can.

Employers, facing a higher tax bill, would most likely reduce wages. But the state would give employees a wage credit, which would be deductible.

So if an employee makes $75,000 a year, and the employer lowers her salary to $65,000 because it's now paying a new payroll tax, the state would give the employee a wage credit for $10,000. The employee is back where she started (at $75,000) — but now she has her state taxes shielded from federal taxation.

This proposal could reach more people than the charitable deduction, Galle said.

"You might be benefiting all your constituents," he said. "Not just the ones who itemize." It might, however, require workers to accept an immediate pay cut.

Mujica said these proposals are a top priority for the state.

"We'd like to get legislation drafted in the next few weeks," he said.

New Jersey

On Jan. 5, Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., proposed a plan that would allow homeowners to make up for lost property tax breaks by taking a charitable deduction.

Towns and cities would establish charitable funds to pay for public services, including schools and law enforcement. Homeowners could make contributions to these funds. The municipality would provide homeowners a tax credit to offset that donation. Then on a federal return, the homeowner can take a charitable deduction for the contribution.

Homeowners who already pay their property taxes monthly, wrapped in with their mortgage payment, would have to work with their lenders to ensure that there would be less or no property tax paid.

Three towns in New Jersey — Fair Lawn, Paramus and Park Ridge — are already designing plans based on this concept.

In response to Mnuchin's comments, Gottheimer said there's already a precedent for this idea. He pointed to an IRS memo that allowed contributions to a state tax credit program to be considered charitable contributions.

Gottheimer also said there are existing plans in a number of states that give taxpayers a credit for contributing to public funds that give money to local causes.

Challenges ahead

The IRS told CNBC that it's not issuing any statements on these proposals as of now — yet the ideas are receiving a fair share of criticism from elsewhere.

"It's the kind of thing that emerges in an ivory tower with not much thought about the practicality," said E.J. McMahon, a conservative economist and founder of the Empire Center for Public Policy.

California Senate leader de León said the California Excellence Fund was modeled after a bill passed in 2014 that permits Californians to donate to a state general fund to support students' higher education. Those donors receive a tax credit for their federal returns.

Similar systems also already exist in Republican leaning states like Alabama and Arizona, he said.

"It's very clear that we already have many states using this model," de Leon said. "If they change this all of a sudden — after this egregious tax policy was passed by the Republicans — it would smack of utter politics."

"These [existing program] contributions produced an actual charitable benefit, whereas the proposals involve a pure tax swap," said Jared Walczak, senior policy analyst at the Tax Foundation. "The IRS requires that charitable contributions have genuine charitable intent and a charitable outcome."

McMahon pointed out that any value you receive from a charitable donation is not deductible. He provided an example: If a person at a silent auction bought a vacation that's worth $2,000, but paid $4,000 for it, he could only deduct $2,000 — because the other half was not charity, but rather a benefit he reaped.

The idea of a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, then, would fly in the face of this policy, he said.

Galle, however, said tax benefits are not considered income, or value in the traditional sense.

"The legal bar for finding that a state tax benefit creates federal income is very high," he said.

New Jersey's proposed program and others like it may pass the charitable intent smell test depending on how they're structured, advocates said.

"Let's say you could direct some of the money you paid — if you could say that it went to cops, to schools — then it's not really a tax, it's a charitable contribution," said Stanford Law School's Bankman. "With current taxes, none of the money can be directed. But here it can be."

Mujica said he is not worried about challenges from the federal government.

"We're going to draft legislation that can withstand any legal tests," he said.

This article originally appeared on CNBC. Read more on CNBC: 

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