The way I look at this, these states have high SALT because they have created a gold plated service model at the local and state level, which requires high local taxes.........while localities in other states may forgo those services altogether, or have a bronze level service, or a service with a more efficient service delivery. Bottom line, all things are clearly not equal, so why is there this need to subsidize those gold plated services/lifesyles in these states with high level SALT for the wealthy?

Let's look at an example, and this is the same for most of these states:

- the locality pays teacher salaries, and their teachers are well paid, and have a great pension and health care plan (during work, and after they retire, and they may have low retirement ages)
- The locality also pays police, and their police are well paid, and have a great pension plan. They might have more police for all I know and a larger force per capita.
- the locality also has a paid firefighter workforce, and they too have a great pension plan
- garbage collectors, they are also well paid,a nd they to also have a great pension plan
- they might have leaf and debris collection services, and (fill in the blank from above)
- They might have a social services network that is government paid that offers a breadth of services

So, the county has a lot of liabilities from past workers, present workers and future workers to deliver on their promise. But its a nice setup for the citizens as they have these full service solutions, and the people working within this service sector are well paid, and have a nice payday when they exit the workforce, probably have 100% of their healthcare paid for, and there is a lot of money floating around to encourage other businesses to locate there.

Now, lets compare to another locality. I pay a contractor to pick up my trash (my county does not have trash collection), we have a volunteer fireforce here in my county (pay for a chief and a few folks, but we aren't paying guys to hang at the firehouse and cook chilli all day long), we pay our teachers, and more than likely all of these local government workers significantly less than those in NJ, AND the pension and healthcare are a far cry from those in these other states for all of these employees. I probably pay more in home insurance because I don't have a full time fireforce out there.

So, at the federal level, exactly why should these counties be treated any differently? These are services that all come in various shades of grey. If you are in a locality that has a built up gold plated plan, so be it, your citizens receive the benefits of that plan, but why should I subsedize your lifestyle? And OMG, let's pitty the wealthy in these locations in their McMansions. Tax the rich is what we hear from the left, and yet, here you have a great example of taxing wealth accumulation (in the form of real estate), and you are fightng to not do it? If the county wants to fix this problem, fix it locally. Find a better way to distribute your tax burden across your citizens versus the current model, or reduce your service burden.

I'm open to hearing the other side on this one, but I just don't get the desire to tax your regular citizens at one rate, and then give the rich a break. Unlike all the secretive tax breaks the wealth have available to hide their wealth, real estate is a very open market, and outside of declairing your estate a farm (and I see that crap around here) to get a reduced local rate, its hard to hide from the real estate property tax monster.