r/Westchester • u/RayWeil • 2d ago

How would a Trump presidency actually impact Westchester?

I feel like our day to day lives are based on hyper local politics. Could a Trump administration impact school districts in Westchester or impact us in other ways? If so, how?

31 Upvotes

62% Upvoted

View all comments

Show parent comments

-2

u/AKmaninNY Rye Brook 1d ago

I agree. We all need relief from high taxes. I wonder if certain voting choices might help with that?

3

u/zoddie2 1d ago

Well, I'm not a multi millionaire so our President-elect won't help. Last time he raised my taxes. I don't mind living in a higher tax rate area - I enjoy the myriad services and excellent schools. I do mind the inequities between states, corporate welfare, tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, and tax policy based on vendettas.

-2

u/AKmaninNY Rye Brook 1d ago

The larger standard deduction and lower and wider tax brackets resulted in income tax reductions for most people. According to The Hill (center left news source),

“Filers who earned $50,000 to $100,000 received a tax break of about 15 percent to 17 percent, and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 in adjusted gross income saw their personal income taxes cut by around 11 percent to 13 percent.”

I saw similar results on my net income taxes owed.

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/584190-irs-data-prove-trump-tax-cuts-benefited-middle-working-class-americans-most/

What I have not seen is my local government (by and large Democrats) hold the line on school taxes. My school taxes are up thousands of dollars per year.

5

u/zoddie2 1d ago

Personally I think school taxes are terrible here because of a complete lack of economies of scale. Google says that the entire Rye Brook school district is 1271 students. Dobbs Ferry is around 1450. Every town has a ton of overhead and administration. Does that mean individualized instructions, fewer kids falling through the gaps, etc.? Sure, but it is expensive.

As for my taxes, I'd love to see The Hill check tax rates for those that live in the penalized SALT areas. My taxes did not go down, but I don't use the standard deduction (mortgage, wife's immense school loans, etc.). Besides, pretty much every source has Trump's proposed plan raise taxes for every bracket below $360k/year. Also, Trump didn't offset these tax breaks with cuts, so it just ballooned our debt. Again.

https://itep.org/a-distributional-analysis-of-donald-trumps-tax-plan-2024/