California Loss Under Tax Plan Put at $3 Billion

President Reagan’s tax simplification plan would cost California $3 billion a year, state Senate President Pro Tem David A. Roberti (D-Los Angeles) said Friday.

In a strong attack on the President’s proposal, Roberti said provisions of the tax plan that would wipe out deductions for state and local taxes seem ironic because Reagan, when California governor, was partly responsible for making this a high-tax state.

“The last major increases in sales and income taxes in California were pushed through the Legislature by then-Gov. Reagan in legislation authored by then-Sen. George Deukmejian,” Roberti said. “Now to take away our ability to deduct those taxes they raised is really unfair.”

Roberti said he will introduce a resolution calling on the President to abandon that part of his tax plan.

California would be hit harder than some other states because a bigger share of its revenue comes from taxes that are now deductible, such as the income, sales and property taxes. Roberti said the average California family of four would pay an extra $1,100 in federal taxes if those deductions were eliminated.

The $3 billion that Roberti estimates would be shifted into the federal Treasury under the plan would otherwise have wound up in the pockets of California taxpayers or spent within the state, he said.

The effect, Roberti added, would be to make it even more difficult to raise state and local taxes since “there are just so many tax dollars the public can and will part with.”

The nation’s dozen or so high-tax states do not have majority control in Congress. But many federal lawmakers agree that the biggest battle over the tax plan is likely to revolve around the deductibility of state and local taxes.

Deukmejian has said he will push for a tax reform plan that is fair and “doesn’t result in a tax increase for the average Californian.”

Roberti called Deukmejian’s statements “oblique” and said the governor has an obligation to speak out much more forcefully because of his close ties to the President.