Wall Street Journal, How to Squeeze the Most From the New SALT Cap:

President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” bumped the limit on state and local tax deductions, known as the SALT cap, to $40,000 from $10,000.

Whether you’re married or single, the new cap is $40,000 and starts phasing down once income reaches $500,000, so strategies for maximizing it depend on how much you earn.

Others in this income group can try to pack more state taxes into 2025 to get as much of the $40,000 as possible. They can accelerate some payments, such as estimated taxes that might be due in January 2026 but could be paid in December. 

Taxpayers have an extra reason to accelerate charitable deductions into 2025 and stack them atop SALT deductions. Starting in 2026, itemized charitable contributions don’t qualify for a deduction until they exceed 0.5% of income. That means someone making $400,000 won’t get a deduction for the first $2,000 in donations. 

Taxpayers can concentrate state and local taxes and charitable contributions in years when they itemize and take the standard deduction in other years. 

Alan Gassman, an estate lawyer in Clearwater, Fla., is putting his $1.6 million St. Petersburg, Fla., vacation home and $1 million or so of bonds into a nongrantor irrevocable trust, where the person creating it gives up control of assets. The beneficiaries will be his wife, his children and charity. His daughter will be the trustee. The trust gets to take the SALT deduction for the $26,000 in property taxes on the home, even though Gassman’s income makes him personally subject to the $10,000 SALT cap.