Ciattarelli supported ending cap on local tax deductions, now favors law that keeps it

New Jersey Republican gubernatorial candidate Jack Ciattarelli has in the past supported removing the cap on the amount of state and local taxes that can be deducted when filing federal taxes, which was first created by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump during his first administration.

However, Ciattarelli has also publicly applauded the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed earlier this summer by Trump, saying, “Nearly every person in our state will receive a significant tax break, especially working and middle-class New Jerseyans.” The law Ciattarelli is applauding doesn’t remove the so-called SALT cap, however; instead, it only extends and raises it.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act implemented a $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction, which was set to expire this year prior to the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Prior to the enactment of the 2017 law, taxpayers could write off all state and local taxes on their federal returns.

Trump’s new budget raises the cap temporarily: For the 2025 tax year, the cap is now set at $40,000 for earners making under $500,000. The cap will rise slightly each year until 2030, when it resets to $10,000.

Ciattarelli detailed his support for removing the cap in a 2022 op-ed in the New Jersey Globe.

“The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which imposed a $10,000 cap on the SALT deduction, has had a disproportionate effect on very few states, including New Jersey and New York. Reason being, the residents of both states pay the highest property taxes in the nation, as well as some of the highest income taxes,” Ciattarelli wrote in the op-ed. “A SALT deduction capped, for no good reason, at $10,000 therefore disadvantages many New Jerseyans and New Yorkers, including middle class families. This is all the more unacceptable considering the fact that New Jersey and New York are ‘donor states’ (i.e., they pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal benefits) and have been for decades.”

Now Ciattarelli is offering full-throated support of the law that keeps the cap in place.

“Shame on any Republican across the country that doesn’t support this. The president supports it,” he said in an interview on Philadelphia-area radio station WPHT. “This is really great news that it has been quadrupled. I wanted full restoration, but something is better than nothing.” 

Had Trump’s budget law not been passed this summer, the SALT cap would have expired.

“Instead of letting the SALT cap expire for good, Washington Republicans have reinstated this double tax on the Garden State,” Mikie Sherrill, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Democratic nominee for governor of New Jersey, said in a July 1 statement after the U.S. Senate voted to pass the law.