Common Sense: Going for a fix
The Republicans in the New York State Senate unanimously voted last week for a bill sponsored by State Senator Simcha Felder – a Brooklyn conservative Democrat who sits in the Republican caucus – that would uncouple your New York State tax return from your federal return, allowing for itemized deductions on your state return.
At present you cannot itemize on your state return. You receive the itemization when you carry the bottom line numbers over from your federal return. This will significantly reduce the negative impact that the federal changes could have on, for instance, a property tax deduction that many New Yorkers had been, but will no longer be able to take, on their Federal returns.
This all goes to the point that several Republican congressmembers from New York State made at the time the federal tax cut was being debated. When confronted with the charge that the bill would result in your state taxes going up, they argued that it made no sense to defeat a federal reform that will give many New Yorkers a tax cut when New York State has it totally within its power to change its own tax code, preventing any negative effects.