Little Things Mean A Lot: Respect Workers by Bringing Back the Deductibility of Union Dues

This anti-worker provision is one of the parts of the Trump tax law due to expire in 2026.

By William Rice

Sometimes it’s not just the big policy changes that show who the policymakers are looking out for—less obvious policy details can signal a lot. An example is the provision in the 2017 Trump-GOP tax law that barred union members from deducting their union dues when doing their taxes. Since businesses were allowed to keep deducting their expenses from their income before figuring their tax obligations, this change nestled in a law that Republicans were trying to spin as a working-class win, was clear evidence of Republicans favoring bosses over workers. 

Before the Republican tax law was enacted in 2018, union members who itemized their deductions could deduct their union dues from their taxable income if those dues along with other so-called “miscellaneous” deductions together were large enough (exceeded 2% of their income). Deductions make a person’s taxable income lower and therefore lowers the amount of taxes owed. 

Did this deduction make any union members rich? No, but it saved them and their families money and importantly, it also showed that the United States government respected and valued union membership enough to support them in the tax code. Barring that deduction was a slap in the face of union members. 

This anti-worker provision is one of the parts of the Trump tax law due to expire in 2026. Like the parts that will restore higher, fairer taxes on the highest-income Americans, this prohibition on the deduction of union dues should be allowed to expire on schedule. 

But we can use the tax system to support union workers even more—and by extension, all labor, since strong unions improve the wages and working conditions of all workers, whether those workers are union members or not. We can do that by allowing members to write off the cost of their dues even if they don’t itemize their deductions.

Two Democratic members of Congress from Pennsylvania, Rep. Brendan Boyle and Sen. Bob Casey, along with Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ) in the House, have introduced in their respective chambers, legislation that would not only restore the deductibility of union dues, but also allow union members to subtract their dues from their income even if they don’t itemize. The Tax Fairness for Workers Act would also allow workers to write off other employment costs, such as job searches, out-of-pocket expenditures for uniforms and tools, and other work-related expenses.

As noted above, businesses are still allowed under the Trump law to deduct their costs before figuring their taxes. When those rules began to tighten a few years ago, taking away excessive deductions that didn’t match economic reality, big business howled. They’ve thrown their army of lobbyists at the “problem,” determined to get their generous deductions back. And of course Republicans in Congress are all ears. 

These restrictions on how much businesses can deduct were outliers in the Trump-GOP tax law, most of which greatly benefitted the rich and big corporations. Those tax giveaways to the wealthy—which include a massive cut in the corporate tax rate, a lower top individual tax rate and a weakened estate tax—are all by definition anti-worker, since they lose trillions of dollars in revenue that we need to fund services and programs that support working families. Unless we want to go deeper into debt, we can’t maintain, strengthen and expand decent healthcare, child care, housing and education if we keep giving away a fortune in tax cuts to the wealthy. 

That’s why Congress should put union members and working families first by letting all the Trump tax cuts exclusively benefitting households with annual incomes over $400,000 expire at the end of 2025. And while we’re at it, we should allow the prohibition on the deduction of union dues to expire at the same time and pass the Tax Fairness for Workers Act. Taken together, these policies are how Congress and the next Administration can show union members that their government respects them, protects them, and values their contributions to our nation.