Champion of the Rich

Who would’ve thunk it? Mayor de Blasio — Champion of the Wealthy. No joke: Hizzoner is suddenly worried about the “human impact” of the GOP tax plan, which scraps the federal writeoff for state and local taxes, or SALT. De Blasio warns the fallout would be “huge.”

Yet ending the SALT deduction would hit the rich hardest. As Brian Riedl noted in The Post last month, less than 25 percent of taxpayers earning below $100,000 take the writeoff, versus 80 percent of those who make above that amount.

And the deduction saves far more for richer folks, because they’re in higher tax brackets. Indeed, half the SALT savings go to folks making over $500,000. These are the people de Blasio wants to protect?

This, when the mayor’s answer for almost anything is a local “millionaires’ tax” — that is, higher taxes on the same folks he’s looking to protect from the federal taxman.

What’s driving his hypocrisy? Two words: greed and power. De Blasio’s eager to see the rich get squeezed — as long as he’s the one doing the squeezing, and controlling the funds that result.

Then, too, ditching the federal deduction will boost anger at New York’s sky-high tax burden, making it harder to raise taxes here — and perhaps even forcing tax cuts, lest wealthy residents flee the state altogether, taking their tax payments with them.

The GOP plans also cap the local property-tax deduction at $10,000. That, too, focuses the pain on wealthier homeowners — those with more valuable properties, which incur higher taxes.

True, that cap is likely to drag down housing prices. But isn’t that something Mayor Affordable Housing usually wants?

Gov. Cuomo also moans about the loss of the SALT writeoff. Congress, he says, is using New York “as a piggy bank to finance the tax cuts in other states.” Sorry: Other regions can as easily complain that, as of now,

they subsidize New York’s high taxes. Yes, high-tax states like New York will have to adjust — by cutting the government outlays that fuel local taxes. Cuomo could start by axing some of his pork-laden “economic development” funding, while de Blasio could stop paying tens of millions above

the contracted price for school busing. As for their defense of writeoffs for the rich, well, we all need a good laugh, no?