States with high local taxes are largely Democratic, and some officials in those states have complained that the cap was designed to punish Democratic voters.

In a tweet, Grassley’s committee termed the SALT deduction “a federal subsidy for states to raise taxes on their residence without political consequence.”

In three of the states most affected -- California, New Jersey and New York -- Republicans lost 14 U.S. House seats in the 2018 midterms, accounting for about a third of the party’s overall losses. Additionally, two key lawmakers in crafting the Republican tax overhaul -- former Representatives Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Peter Roskam of Illinois -- lost their seats where the unpopularity of the new law was a major issue in their campaigns.

NY Taxpayers Flee

Senator Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, vowed Feb. 5 to block the nomination of Michael Desmond to become chief counsel at the Internal Revenue Service over the cap. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said recently that the SALT cap and other tax changes had prompted a $2.3 billion shortfall in state revenue in December; he blamed the cap for causing some taxpayers to flee to states like Florida, which has no state income tax. In Connecticut, the cap will cause residents to pay an additional $2.8 billion in taxes for the 2018 tax year, according to state figures released last July.

Those three states, along with Maryland, sued the Treasury Department, the IRS and the Trump administration in Manhattan federal court in July, challenging the cap as infringing upon their state authority among other claims.

Westchester County

In New York’s Westchester County, the average property tax bill was $14,654, according to an April 2018 report by the New York State Association of Counties.

Democrats in Congress, including House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal of Massachusetts, have already vowed to tackle the SALT cap. “We are going to revisit the SALT deduction, I can tell you that,” he told a business forum on Nov. 27.

Still, it’s not clear that any changes would be enacted into law, given that many Republicans support the cap, as do many Democrats outside of the high-tax Northeast and California.