Taxpayers here and across the country were submitting the payments in hopes of beating a new $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions that begins next year as part of the massive tax-reform law passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump.
But there’s a problem. According to the Internal Revenue Service, people could only prepay 2018 property taxes if those taxes had already been assessed. In Utah, those assessments don’t happen until just after the new year.
“The IRS will probably rule against [these prepayments] qualifying as a 2017 deduction,” Salt Lake County Treasurer Wayne Cushing said Friday.