LaLota says Suffolk families saved $3,000 from federal tax changes

Suffolk County families are seeing the sharpest federal tax relief in years, but the savings are landing unevenly. Rep. Nick LaLota said June 15 that households here saved about $3,000 this year from higher SALT deductions and other federal tax changes, a windfall that matters most in a county where property taxes already rank among the region’s heaviest burdens.

LaLota has tied that savings to a years-long fight over the state and local tax deduction. In May, he said the SALT cap would jump from $10,000 to $40,000 for households earning under $500,000 if the House-passed bill became law, and that many Suffolk families could save as much as $8,000 on their 2026 federal returns. He also said 92% of the families he represents would be "made whole" by the change. The numbers resonate on Long Island, where lawmakers have pointed to Tax Foundation data showing median property taxes in both Suffolk and Nassau counties above $10,000.

That is where the headline figure starts to break down. The biggest winners are homeowners with high property-tax bills and incomes below the $500,000 ceiling, not every Suffolk taxpayer. LaLota said in a July 3 statement that a Long Island family earning $250,000 and paying $18,000 in property taxes would get $5,000 more back when filing 2025 taxes. A household with a smaller tax bill would still see relief, but not the same scale. Families above the income cap are excluded from the expanded SALT benefit altogether.

The broader One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed the House on May 22, 2025 and became law on July 4, 2025. LaLota said the bill quadruples the SALT cap for five years and eliminates federal taxes on tips and overtime, giving workers another layer of relief beyond the property-tax break. But that part of the package will not show up the same way for everyone. Newsday reported in April 2026 that millions of Americans were expected to claim the new federal breaks for tips and overtime, while state tax treatment could vary depending on whether New York conforms to the federal changes.

The politics around the bill were just as sharp as the math. Long Island Republicans cast the SALT change as overdue correction for a high-cost region still living with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act cap, while Gov. Kathy Hochul blasted the legislation as favoring "the billionaire class" and warned it would hit SNAP, affordable housing, clean energy and Medicaid. For Suffolk homeowners, the result is a familiar Long Island divide: real money for some, partial relief for others, and little benefit at all for the households outside the income band that now gets the break.