Sherrill Blasts Redacted TIGTA Report

Washington, DC — Today, Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill (NJ-11) blasted the administration’s decision to issue a heavily redacted report to the public on issuance of IRS Notice 2018-54, which discussed proposed regulations regarding the state and local tax deduction and charitable contributions. Residents in the 11th Congressional District deduct an average of $19,000 in state and local taxes from their federal tax bill each year.

Sherrill’s statement follows Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal’s (MA-01) decision to make the full Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report available to the public.

“This is yet another attack on New Jersey taxpayers, and an effort to block the public from understanding the lengths the administration will go to punish our state,” said Congresswoman Sherrill. “To have Treasury Secretary Mnuchin direct the IRS to continue targeting states like New Jersey is unacceptable. I will continue to fight for tax fairness and to end the SALT deduction cap that amounts to double taxation on New Jerseyans.”

According to the New York Times:

Most of the publicly available audit is redacted, even though it contains no sensitive taxpayer information. The omitted pages include a timeline of the administration’s actions related to SALT, according to a complete version of the audit obtained by The New York Times.

Treasury and I.R.S. officials insisted on the redactions, after initially pushing to shield the report from public view entirely, a spokesman for the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said on Tuesday.

Sample of redaction below: