Long Island is No. 1, but it shouldn’t be proud
Levittown, looking northwest from Wolcott Road on the right to Newbridge Road at top left. Credit: Newsday / Jim Peppler
President Donald Trump oftens says he is from Long Island, and that he is very fond of it.
But he and Congressional Republicans are about to crown it with a dubious national title: the absolute worst place in the United States to own a home if the unpopular federal tax bill passes.
The final version is expected to cap the total local and state property, income and sales taxes taxpayers can deduct at $10,000. That’s brutal.
Business Insider crunched some Census and real estate data to come up with its top losers. No. 1 is Long Island, where 46.5 percent of homeowners pay more than $10,000 in property taxes alone. That’s a rate more than double third-place finisher New York City and fourth-place finisher Fairfield County, Connecticut. And it’s more than four times the percentage of homeowners whose bill is more than $10,000 in 10th place Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The bad news about the property taxes isn’t the end of it. Long Islanders will lose their state income tax deduction, which on a family earning $150,000 a year in taxable income is about $10,000 annually.
While the structure and intent of the GOP bill has been created to crush blue-state taxpayers, Republican states are not entirely spared. On the Business Insider’s list Houston and Austin, Texas, make the top 11 worst list.
Maybe New Yorkers need to stop calling Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand and start calling Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.
This post originally appeared in The Point, the editorial board’s daily newsletter about politics and policy. Click here to subscribe.
