Trump’s New Jersey tax attack omits deadline in his own law

Donald Trump’s warning leaves out that the deductions are already scheduled to expire after the 2028 tax year under the law he signed in 2025. His allegation about Rebecca Bennett is not established by the positions she set out in a candidates’ questionnaire and in answers to local news outlet Patch.

In a Truth Social post on 2 November, archived by Trump’s Truth, the president endorsed Republican congressman Tom Kean Jr for re-election in New Jersey’s seventh congressional district. He said Bennett, Kean’s Democratic challenger, opposed ‘NO TAX ON TIPS, NO TAX ON OVERTIME, and NO TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY’, and predicted that ‘all of these things will be terminated’ if she and the Democrats got into power. Election day is 3 November.

Bennett has criticised the wider tax and spending package. In the questionnaire, she said her priorities were reversing what she called healthcare cuts and restoring energy tax breaks. She also called for undoing tax cuts for the ‘super wealthy’, while supporting cuts for working families. In her answers to Patch, she said she would seek tax relief for middle-class New Jersey residents. Neither set of answers establishes where she stands on each of the three deductions.

A 2025 Senate bill introduced by Democrat Chuck Schumer and colleagues would repeal a health-related section of the law without removing the deductions. It is one proposal, not a statement of every Democrat’s plans.

Trump used virtually identical wording a day earlier when he endorsed Iowa Republican Zach Nunn and accused his Democratic opponent, Sarah Trone Garriott, of opposing the same measures. Iowa Public Radio and Iowa Starting Line had previously reported that Trone Garriott supported making all three deductions permanent, contradicting his description of her. Her position does not establish Bennett’s.

What the law provides

Under the 2025 law, eligible workers can deduct up to $25,000 of qualifying tips from their federal taxable income. The overtime deduction, capped at $12,500 for an individual, applies only to qualifying premium pay above the normal rate, not the whole overtime wage. Both are subject to income limits and other conditions, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

Trump’s ‘NO TAX ON SOCIAL SECURITY’ label is also misleading. Rather than exempting Social Security payments generally, the law gives eligible people aged 65 and over an additional deduction of up to $6,000. The US programme pays retirement, disability and survivor benefits, which can still be taxable depending on income.

Extending the deductions beyond 2028 would require another law, approved by both houses of Congress and presented to the president. The election could shape that decision, but the current expiry date is already in Trump’s legislation.