Passthrough Entity SALT Cap Workaround Is Messy!

The $10,000 SALT cap enacted as part of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has policy flaws. I have written about this a few times in recent years (7/4/199/21/18) and in a few AICPA comment letters I signed as chair of the Tax Executive Committee (such as 11/10/17). The policy flaws include:

1. Why are C corps the only business entity allowed to fully deduct their state and local business taxes? State and local taxes are a normal expense of any business so should be deductible in computing taxable income. The reason non-C corp businesses (and their individual owners) are subject to the SALT cap even on state and local income taxes on business income is a 1944 law that made such taxes deductions from AGI rather than for AGI and Congress didn’t fix that in 2017 when it added the SALT cap. This should be fixed.

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