As Treasury Targets Workarounds to Tax Law, Impact May Extend Beyond High-Tax States

[Sgent]

Source: Wall Street Journal

Donations are pouring into Monroe County Hospital in Forsyth, Ga., offering a lifeline that is expected to close a $1 million operating deficit and help preserve local medical care and jobs.

The lifeline may not last, however, because it could be collateral damage from a coming Treasury Department regulation aimed at curbing efforts by New York, New Jersey and other high-tax states to work around deduction caps in the new U.S. tax law.

In Georgia, those contributions came through a state program that gives donors a dollar-for-dollar reduction on their state taxes for gifts to rural hospitals. On top of that, the donations are deductible from federal income taxes as charitable contributions, creating a savvy, increasingly popular and potentially endangered tax strategy.

People hitting the new $10,000 federal cap on state-and-local tax, or SALT, deductions can transform nondeductible state-tax payments into deductible donations, turning a profit on charity.



Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/as-treasury-targets-workarounds-to-tax-law-impact-may-extend-beyond-high-tax-states-1530091801

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Sorry its a paywall, but its the only article I've seen discussing the issue I've seen.

[SWBTATTReg]

1. Clever...dollar for dollar deduction in lieu of soon to be non-deductible state and local taxes ...

using gifts and the like as pseudo tax payments (state and/or local). Be interesting to see how the IRS addresses this as an issue, although w/ the cut in manpower made by rump to the IRS may hamper this.

I guarantee you that there will be other such 'in lieu of' state and / or local tax payment schemes to follow, in an attempt to get around the $10000 cap on deducting state and/or local taxes in high tax states. This limit is bound to cause hurt everywhere and is poorly targeted, because there are lots of jurisdictions where taxes are over $10000 (all along the entire coast of the US, island of Hawaii?, as well as other desirable places to live in this country, such as Florida, Texas (warm climates, etc.).

I mention this because folks have said that this $10000 limit seemed to be targeting those blue states that rump lost (which could be true). However, I think more people are going to be negatively impacted and this will cause an outcry before too long, in both red and blue states.

And now they want to do another tax law...reducing the corp. tax rate by, get this, only 1%...woooooow!