Boats, Picket Lines, 'jersey Pride': Trump Tax Breaks Inspire Wave Of Copycats

President Donald Trump’s signature tax breaks for tips, overtime, seniors and car-loan interest were only the beginning.

Special carveouts for regular Americans are suddenly all the rage in Congress, with lawmakers in both parties proposing new tax cuts for cops, farmers, homebuyers, striking workers and businesses selling New Jersey swag.

Many are closely modeled after the president’s provisions, down to bill names like “No Tax on Boat Loan Interest,” “No Taxes on Utility Bills” and “No Tax on Health Care.”

“Must be an election year,” said Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), a retiring tax writer.

Targeted tax breaks are nothing new, but Trump has breathed new life into the genre — animating all sides in the process.

Conservatives are dismayed at their party abandoning the mantra of lowering rates while widening the tax base in favor of what many see as little more than earmarks that clutter the tax code. Progressives worry the proposals will sponge up scarce dollars they’d rather spend on priorities like expanding health coverage. And deficit hawks across the political spectrum don't want to further shrink the tax base when the government is running $2 trillion deficit.

It all comes despite the fact that Republicans’ 2025 tax cuts putting the breaks in place weren’t all that popular. A recent POLITICO poll found that even Trump supporters are not sold on the legislation, with only a quarter believing average people received substantial benefits. But the president's new deductions put a spotlight on the taxes paid by average Americans, and now elected officials across the board want to show they, too, are responding to voters’ concerns about affordability ahead of the midterm elections.

Not a temporary trend

The debate also promises to live past November.

Lawmakers will face yet another fiscal cliff in 2028, when the provisions created in 2025's "big, beautiful bill" are poised to expire. Republicans made them temporary because they didn’t actually like Trump’s ideas all that much, but couldn’t refuse him.

Allowing the new tax breaks to lapse at the end of 2028 already appears unlikely though, with more than 35 million claiming an expanded deduction for seniors, and 29 million taking advantage of an up to $12,500 per-person writeoff for overtime pay. More than seven million have claimed a tax break for tipped income, important to Nevada, a perennial swing state and home to the highest concentration of tipped workers of any state. If they don’t extend the provisions, lawmakers would surely face charges they are raising taxes on average people.

“These policies elicited eye rolls with Republicans while they were crafting the tax bill — these were just Trumpist favors they had to include before getting to the real tax cuts,” said Jessica Riedl, a former Republican tax aide now at Brookings. “Over time, Republicans have increasingly embraced this kind of stuff. I don’t think this is a temporary trend.”

It would cost nearly $600 billion to keep all four provisions, the right-leaning Tax Foundation predicts.

Extend and expand

Democrats and Republicans are proposing to not just extend the breaks but expand them to people who were excluded by the fine print. The overtime break, for example, is limited to people who are covered by the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, and only certain kinds of overtime pay are eligible.

The border patrol doesn’t qualify, which House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) is now trying to change, with his “No Tax on Border Patrol Agent Overtime Act.” Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Jim Justice (R-W.Va.) would one-up him with the “No Tax on Overtime for All Workers Act.”

Sen. Ruben Gallego (R-Ariz.) wants to expand the tip deduction to cover service fees and gratuities automatically added by restaurants to diners' tabs.

Lawmakers and candidates are pushing other bespoke breaks.

Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, running in a tight Senate race, rolled out a Trump-like proposal to supersize a deduction for medical expenses. He’d expand it to $25,000 per person, including dependents, and allow it for all out-of-pocket expenses. Currently, the deduction is only available when someone’s medical bills exceed 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income, and haven’t been paid with money that was held in certain tax-preferred savings accounts. Paxton also wants to allow home buyers to deduct up to $50,000 from their down payments.

“The American Dream is slipping away as the cost of everything from housing to health care rises,” Paxton said when announcing the plan.

And outgoing Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has drawn snickers among some tax experts with a plan to allow people to deduct the interest they pay on loans to buy boats.

“Car loan interest is already deductible,” Mace said. “There's no good reason boat loan interest isn't.”

Exemptions and deductions for all

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, wants to allow cops to exempt their first $100,000 in earnings from income tax. He downplays any connections to Trump’s provisions, saying he’s focused on helping police departments fill vacancies.

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) proposed temporarily allowing farmers to shield crop payments from tax, and Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) is pushing to exempt the stipends unions give to workers when they go on strike. Rep. Josh Riley (D-N.Y) introduced a deduction for state taxes on utility bills. Then there's Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), who earlier this year floated a 25 percent "Jersey Pride Tax Credit" for retailers selling Garden State-branded merchandise.

And there's a whole subcategory of proposals to cut taxes on seniors, like a plan rolled out last week by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) to create a new credit for age-related modifications to homes, such as installing a wheelchair ramp.

Some Democrats, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a possible 2028 presidential candidate, want to trump them all with a plan to exempt everyone making less than $46,000 from paying federal income taxes.

Van Hollen has taken a lot of heat over the proposal from fellow Democrats, who complain it would not only siphon money away from other priorities, but could help whip up voter hostility to taxes by emphasizing the burden of what they pay.

But to Van Hollen’s supporters, the critics are not reckoning with the quandary Democrats will face in 2028, when Trump’s breaks will be poised to expire in the thick of a presidential campaign.

“I don’t know what they think is going to happen,” said Bob Lord, a vice president at Patriotic Millionaires, a group of wealthy individuals who support higher taxes, who helped devise Van Hollen’s plan. “If they do away with no tax on tips, well, they can kiss the state of Nevada goodbye.”