Mayors conference ‘strongly opposes’ local provisions of GOP tax bill

The U.S. Conference of Mayors came out in strong opposition to the Senate GOP’s plan to eliminate state and local tax deductions.

“The nation’s mayors strongly oppose the Senate’s proposal to eliminate the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction in their tax reform bill,” New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu (D), president of the USCM, said in a prepared statement on behalf of the group.

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“The Senate repeal of SALT violates the promise that tax reform would provide relief for middle class families. Instead the proposal would tax these families twice on the same income,” he added.

The USCM is a nonpartisan organization of mayors or other top elected officials representing cities of more than 30,000 people.

The provisions affecting the state and local tax deductions could be a major stumbling block for the GOP tax bill. In the House, a significant group of Republicans from blue states threatened to oppose the tax plan based on the SALT elimination.

A compromise to maintain property tax deductions up to $10,000 appears to have won many of them over.

The Senate version of the bill, however, did away with the property tax deduction. The House and Senate must reconcile the differences in their bills before the plan can move forward.

Repealing the SALT deductions in some form or another is one of the major ways Congress hopes to pay for some of the tax cuts in its bill. The GOP budget allows the tax plan to increase deficits by a maximum of $1.5 trillion over a decade.

The House GOP tax bill has advanced to the full floor for a vote that is expected sometime next week. The Senate Finance Committee will begin a markup of the upper chamber’s proposal on Monday.