President Trump’s daughter and senior adviser Ivanka Trump sided Monday with the House GOP’s tax reform bill on the contentions issue of state and local tax deductions that would be completely eliminated under the Senate plan.
“House Ways and Means solved that problem in a creative way in allowing property taxes to be deducted. The Senate is still not there,” Ms. Trump said on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends.”
The state and local tax deductions or SALT has emerged as a major discrepancy between the House and Senate tax reform bills. Ms. Trump’s backing of the compromise in the House bill was a strong indication of where the White House comes down in that dispute.
The elimination of the tax break would potentially raise federal income taxes for middle- and high-income residents in high-tax blue states such as California, New York and New Jersey.
The House bill would keep the deduction for property taxes and eliminate state and local income taxes. The compromise helped retain support from Republican members from high-tax states.
Ms. Trump has been touring the U.S. to build support for the president’s tax reform effort.
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“The purpose of tax reform is to provide middle-income tax relief and to enable our businesses to grow and our economy to grow,” she said.
Ms. Trump insisted that the combination of tax breaks for middle-class families and tax cuts for businesses would result in more money in workers’ paychecks.
The first daughter visited Maine for a forum Friday with the state’s Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican who has resisted Mr. Trump’s agenda and helped defeat the repeal of Obamacare.
Ms. Trump said she was encouraged that Ms. Collin has the same goals as the president for tax reform.
“That’s a good start,” Ms. Trump said. “She wants to create growth. She wants to create prosperity. She recognizes that cutting corporate taxes is going to give employers the impetus to hire more workers, and it is going to create wage growth, which is what this country desperately needs and has not had in a very long period of time.”
• S.A. Miller can be reached at smiller@washingtontimes.com.
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