SALT Deduction Calculator

$40,400 for 2026, or $20,200 for married taxpayers filing separately. The cap is reduced by 30 cents for every dollar of modified adjusted gross income above $505,000 ($252,500 for married filing separately), and it cannot fall below a floor of $10,000 ($5,000 filing separately). The monetary amounts increase by 1% a year through 2033, and absent further legislation the cap reverts to $10,000 on 1 January 2030.

The phase-down begins at $505,000 of modified adjusted gross income for 2026 and runs at 30 cents of cap lost per dollar of income. Starting from a $40,400 cap and a $10,000 floor, the $30,400 of enhanced cap is fully removed after roughly $101,333 of excess income — so the cap bottoms out at about $606,333 of MAGI. Above that point you have a flat $10,000 deduction regardless of how much state tax you actually paid.

No. The SALT deduction is an itemised deduction on Schedule A, so it is only available if you itemise, and itemising only makes sense if your total itemised deductions exceed the standard deduction — $32,200 for a married couple filing jointly in 2026, $16,100 single, $24,150 head of household. This is why the calculator asks for your other itemised deductions: a $40,400 SALT deduction is worth nothing extra to someone whose remaining deductions are small enough that the standard deduction still wins.

State and local income taxes withheld and paid, including estimated payments; or, as an alternative, state and local general sales taxes — you may take whichever is larger but not both. Real property taxes on your home and other real estate count, as do personal property taxes charged on value, such as value-based vehicle registration fees. All of these share the single cap; property tax does not have a separate allowance of its own.

Yes, and it is unusually stark. A married couple filing jointly gets a $40,400 cap and a $505,000 phase-down threshold — exactly the same figures as a single filer, rather than double them. Two single people with $505,000 each therefore have $80,800 of combined cap and no phase-down, while the same two people married and filing jointly share one $40,400 cap and are deep into the phase-down. Filing separately does not fix it, because that halves everything to $20,200 and $252,500.

Each additional dollar of MAGI in the band is taxed at your ordinary rate and also destroys 30 cents of deduction, which is then taxed at that same rate. For a taxpayer in the 37% bracket that adds roughly 11.1 percentage points, giving an effective marginal rate of about 48.1% on income inside the band. This is why the phase-down range is where deferring income or accelerating deductions is worth the most — the same logic as the UK's 60% personal allowance trap.

Often yes, even though the cap is far larger than it was. A PTET election has the state tax paid at entity level, which makes it a business deduction rather than an individual itemised deduction, so it sits outside the individual cap and outside the phase-down entirely. It also sits outside the new limitation on the value of itemised deductions that applies from 2026. For a business owner in a high-tax state whose SALT already exceeds the phased-down cap, the election frequently remains the single largest federal saving available.

A limitation that applies from 2026 in place of the old Pease rule. Itemised deductions are reduced by 2/37ths of the lesser of total itemised deductions or taxable income above the point at which the 37% bracket begins — $640,600 for single filers and heads of household, $768,700 for married couples filing jointly. The effect is a ceiling of about 35 cents of benefit per dollar of deduction for top-bracket taxpayers, and it applies to all itemised deductions together, so SALT competes with mortgage interest and charitable gifts for the same reduced value.

It makes AMT more likely, which is the trap in the enlarged 2026 cap. State and local taxes are added back in full when computing alternative minimum taxable income, so a larger SALT deduction reduces your regular tax while leaving your AMTI unchanged — narrowing the gap between the two calculations from the regular side. Combined with the 2026 reset of the AMT exemption phase-out to $500,000 single and $1,000,000 joint, and the doubling of the phase-out rate to 50%, a taxpayer claiming a full SALT deduction should always run the AMT calculation as well.

No. The enhanced cap runs from 2025 through 2029 with the monetary amounts rising 1% a year through 2033, but absent further Congressional action the cap reverts to $10,000 on 1 January 2030. That end date matters for anything with a multi-year horizon — a decision about when to realise income, when to prepay property tax, or whether to make a PTET election is affected by whether the enhanced cap will still exist in the year concerned.

You can accelerate genuine liabilities into the current year, but only within limits and only usefully if you are not already above the cap. Prepaying property tax that has actually been assessed generally works; prepaying a tax that has not yet been assessed generally does not. And if your SALT already exceeds the phased-down cap, accelerating more of it produces no additional deduction at all — the extra payment is simply lost for federal purposes. Check where you sit against the cap before writing the cheque.

Only for state and local taxes they actually pay, which for most expatriates is little or nothing once state residency has been cleanly severed. Foreign income taxes are not SALT — they are relieved through the foreign tax credit or, at the taxpayer's election, as an itemised deduction for foreign taxes, which is a different and usually inferior route. An American abroad who still has a state filing obligation, or who owns US property and pays property tax on it, can claim those amounts subject to the same cap and phase-down.

The comparison is between total itemised deductions and $32,200 for 2026. Because the SALT cap phases down to $10,000 above roughly $606,333 of MAGI, a high-income couple with modest mortgage interest and charitable giving can find that itemising no longer beats the standard deduction at all — even in a high-tax state where they paid $60,000 of state and local tax. Running the comparison is the first step, because if the standard deduction wins, the entire SALT question becomes academic for that year.

It applies the 2026 cap of $40,400, the $505,000 phase-down threshold at 30%, the $10,000 floor, the filing-separately halving, the 2026 standard deductions and the 2/37 cap on the value of itemised deductions, using your selected marginal rate. It assumes a single tax year and does not compute the alternative minimum tax, PTET elections, state-level treatment, the sales-tax alternative, or the interaction with other phase-outs keyed to adjusted gross income. Treat it as a planning baseline and have the return prepared properly.