Kamala Harris has already stolen one idea from Donald Trump, now she should steal another: helping middle-class families in California and other high-tax states.

Leave authorial pride behind. If an idea is good politically or good policy, stick with it. It's election season. Stay open-minded and realize that even your campaign opponent, even the vile Mr. Trump, can sometimes come up with something worthwhile.

Harris should emulate this. President Trump promises to restore federal tax cuts We should have a SALT on state and local taxes (SALT in government jargon), if only because it would dramatically help millions of Californians.

The Vice President has already set a precedent for campaign theft.

Governor Harris last month cleverly adopted a Trump proposal to exempt service workers' tips from federal income tax, while also winning the support of Las Vegas' powerful Culinary Workers Union, which represents many restaurant and hotel workers.

Nevada is one of seven closely contested battleground states that are expected to determine the winner of the presidential election on November 5.

Never mind that making tips tax-free is a flawed idea: Many workers who receive tips earn too little to ever have to pay federal income tax, so there's no benefit to them.

Either way, tips are income. Why are some sources of income tax-exempt but others not?

But exempting tips is probably more realistic. I suspect tips are not reported as income. They are part of the underground economy. And does the IRS care about catching these “cheaters”? I doubt it. The IRS should be focused on uncovering large scale tax evasion.

The SALT idea has also been met with criticism.

First, the background.

President Trump and Republican lawmakers gutted the tax cuts in 2017. Now, President Trump believes it would be politically expedient to revive them to appeal to middle-class voters.

“I will turn it around, bring back SALT, lower taxes and much more,” Trump wrote on his social media platform, Truth Social, last week, a pledge he later repeated at a campaign event in New York.

“Trump is making completely empty promises,” argued Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine), a leading advocate of restoring the SALT deduction. “Trump is the one who created this mess with SALT.”

President Trump needed money from the middle class to pay for his 2017 corporate tax cuts, so he and Republicans in Congress put a $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions.

Previously, people could deduct all of their state income and local property taxes on their federal tax returns. The average SALT deduction in California was more than $18,400. In the first year of the cap, Californians who itemized deductions owed a total of $12 billion in additional taxes, according to a report by the state Franchise Tax Board.

High-tax blue states led by Democrats were especially hard hit by the Republican bill, which didn't matter much to many red states with low or no income taxes, such as Texas and Florida.

Then-California Governor Jerry Brown accused Republican congressional leaders of “wielding their power like a Mafia gang.”

More recently, Republican Rep. Mike Garcia of Santa Clarita argued that the SALT cap is “a legislative middle finger to middle-class families in our community. It penalizes the blue state where I live.”

In 2021, Gov. Gavin Newsom and six other Democratic governors sent a letter to President Biden urging him to “remove the cap.” Nothing came of it.

“The SALT cap is based on politics, not logic or good government,” the governors argued. “This attack unfairly targets states run by Democrats.”

Critics argue that removing the SALT cap or raising it to, say, $80,000 would primarily benefit the wealthy. That's wrong.

This would help taxpayers who itemize deductions when filing their federal income taxes, especially homeowners who pay property taxes, which in California amount to millions of dollars.

What some consider wealthy in some states is actually middle class in much of California, where housing costs are high and often unaffordable. Increasing the property tax deduction would be a big help.

Sure, people with more assets would save the most in taxes, but that's relative: the savings for middle-class people might be more meaningful.

I suspect that many of the critics of the SALT deduction are renters who rarely take itemized deductions and instead take the standard deduction. One of the good things about the Trump tax law is that it nearly doubled the standard deduction. Therefore, we shouldn't get rid of this entire tax system.

Another complaint about the SALT deduction is that it subsidizes taxes in high-tax states such as California, New York and New Jersey.

“The states that take more from the federal government than they pay in taxes are primarily Republican states. The states that take less from the federal government but pay more in taxes are primarily Democratic states,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), who has tried to reinstate the SALT deduction without success.

“Blue states are subsidizing red states. We should be trying to lower costs for all middle-class families.”

Porter has been instrumental in restoring tax cuts. She introduced legislation that would eliminate the cap for all taxpayers making less than $400,000 a year.

“It never saw the light of day,” she says.

“There was no will from either the Democratic or Republican leadership,” she argued. “And that's the fact. If they had wanted to [to alter the cap] They sent me the bill. [House] Please come to the chamber to vote.”

That makes sense.

Porter is leaving Congress this year. He ran for Senate but came in third in the primary and lost out in November's election.

The Trump tax law, including the SALT cap, is set to expire next year unless Congress renews it, and there will be fights over which parts to keep and which to scrap.

Harris should join President Trump in promising to lift the cap. That would be good politics and even better policy.