The GOP tax plan that passed the U.S. Senate on December 2 would raise taxes for the average middle-class and low-income New Jersey family while cutting taxes for wealthier families and for large corporations, according to a new fact sheet released today by New Jersey Policy Perspective (NJPP).

The NJPP fact sheet analyzes the impact of the bill on New Jersey households across the income spectrum, and finds:

• New Jersey households with incomes over $1.4 million (the top 1 percent) would receive an average $8,350 tax cut while the bulk of Garden State families (the bottom 60 percent, or those with incomes under $111,000) would see a tax hike averaging $120.
• Those families in the top 1 percent would receive 64 percent of the state’s share of the tax cut – $378.8 million in total – while the bottom 60 percent would, together, receive less than 0 percent of the tax cut, since they’d pay a total of $333.7 million more in taxes.
• About 1 in 4 New Jersey taxpayers (26 percent) would see a tax hike.
• 54 percent of New Jersey households currently claiming a property tax deduction would no longer do so.
• New Jerseyans would likely deduct nearly $27 billion less in state and local taxes under the Senate-passed bill than they do now.

The pain for New Jersey’s working families does not end with the direct impact of this tax bill, unfortunately. In fact, the tax bill is step one of Congressional Republicans’ two-step tax and budget agenda: enact costly tax cuts now that are heavily skewed toward wealthy households and profitable corporations, then use the cost of those tax cuts and their negative impact on the federal deficit as a rationale to cut public services, programs and investments on which all Americans – particularly low- and moderate-income residents – rely.