NJ gets screwed the worst by Trump tax law, study finds

Under the tax laws signed into law by President Donald Trump, New Jersey will have the highest share of residents paying more taxes and one of the lowest shares of people getting tax cuts, a new study finds.

Kim Rueben, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, said while a majority of Garden State residents will wind up getting a tax cut, “New Jersey does have the dubious distinction of having the highest share of people who actually see their taxes increase under the new law."

About 10 percent of people in New Jersey will see their taxes go up.

On the other end, 61.5 percent of Jersey taxpayers will wind up getting a tax cut, but Rueben says only four other states have a smaller percentage of people who will wind up paying lower taxes.

She estimated the average tax increase for those who will pay more will be about $2,000.

Wealthier families have always been able to itemize many deductions but the new tax law caps local tax deductions at $10,000, which is a few thousand dollars above the average property tax bill.

Rutgers University economist James Hughes said it’s important to remember the top 1 percent of wage earners in New Jersey pay close to 40 percent of taxes in the state, so if they move to states with lower taxes it will hurt New Jersey.

Tom Bracken, the president of the New Jersey State Chamber of Commerce, said his group opposed the new tax laws that were ultimately passed by Congress because “we saw that it had some very big negatives for the state of New Jersey.”

He pointed out because New Jersey is such a high tax state the new tax laws hurt more people and businesses financially than almost any other area.

“We thought that was not a good thing for a state that’s already the biggest donor state in the country,” said Bracken.

“The law could have been written in a way where every state benefitted and everyone benefited, which I would have hoped would have been the initial purpose of it.”

You can contact reporter David Matthau at David.Matthau@townsquaremedia.com