Democrats from high-tax states are campaigning against the GOP’s tax reform, but they’re in a pickle. They want to repeal the new $10,000 cap on the federal deduction for state and local taxes. Yet most Americans with tax bills that large are well off, and Democrats don’t want to be caught helping—oh, no—“the rich.”Hence the tortuous if highly revealing argument floated last week at the Tax Policy Center, the left-leaning think tank that favors higher taxes. Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the tax center, writes that if Congress repealed the deduction cap, “the top 1 percent of households, those making $755,000 or more, would receive more than 56 percent of the tax cut.” So how can populist Democrats avoid looking like hypocrites?

Source: Wall Street Journal September 30, 2018 20:03 UTC