Renews Pledge to Preserve Tax Deductions for New Jersey
February 10,2018
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Marlboro NJ, in what some critics call a last act of a desperate man ,Governor Phil Murphy today called upon mayors to take steps to counteract the effects of the federal tax legislation that gutted New Jersey’s State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction and limited the amount of money state homeowners can deduct from their property taxes.
“When the disastrous federal tax legislation passed, I committed to pushing back and taking steps to ensure that the people of New Jersey are not subjected to unfair double taxation,” Governor Murphy said. “We have begun working with legislative leadership to protect our residents and prevent this plan from further hurting our taxpayers. We must eliminate any and all barriers to creating a system that will provide tax relief to property taxpayers who make charitable contributions to their municipality.”
If the system is implemented, taxpayers can make voluntary contributions to funds that pay for local services like schools, law enforcement, and infrastructure. They will then receive an offsetting tax credit on their property tax bill and contributions will be deductible for federal tax purposes under existing law.
Governor Murphy today was joined by a bipartisan group of mayors who have pledged to allow taxpayers in their towns to make payments to local governments as charitable donations and offset property tax liability. Marlboro Mayor John Hornik, Ocean Township Mayor Christopher Sciciliano, Manasquan Mayor Edward Donovan, Belmar Mayor Matt Doherty, and Aberdeen Mayor Fred Tagliarini pledged to introduce the this plan in their municipalities. They join the mayors of Fair Lawn, Paramus, and Park Ridge who made that pledge in January.
On Thursday, Governor Murphy promised to sign any legislation that reduces existing state roadblocks to municipalities reforming their property tax system to allow for charitable contributions, a system that will preserve local revenues while also providing residents with significant deductibility of their payments from their federal income taxes.
Hypocrisy. He wanted to tax the rich. This tax is only affecting rich.
Proper way to fix this problem is to fix the school funding formula and to remove municipal corruption.
Question: can an unpaid “charitable” payment be filed as a tax lien against a property owner? Would it then be reclassified as a tax and then trigger a need for a re-filed 1040?
In other words, Gov. Murphy wants you to participate in a transparent tax avoidance scheme that will certainly result in you getting fined out of your wazoo by the IRS. How can people justify their vote for this obvious disaster-in-advance? Christie was a complete jerk, but electing someone who will outdo Corzine, McGreevey and him and as a joke is no solution.
8:30. No hypocrisy. He doesn’t want the feds horning in. He wants to hoover up as much from the rich as he can and the change in the SALT deduction is diverting money he thinks he’s entitled to.
8:30 – 41% of NJ tax returns claim a deduction for state and local taxes. The average amount of that deduction is $17,183.33. (latest available figures.) I don’t agree that this only affects the rich.
This “charitable contributions credit” is a scam and illegal. It will never hold up in court.
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Not surprising that the Governor is actively endorsing disobeying the law since he is fast tracking NJ to become a sanctuary state….
maybe GOV Murphy could let us take the full deduction of property taxes for the state income taxes instead of limiting it to 10000 dollars only