clients. Most of them still made out because they weren't far enough over the $10,000 SALT limit for it to hit them too hard. Either the new standard deduction made the SALT limit irrelevant or the tax rate cuts/increased child tax credit made it even out.

The REAL pain is all these folks who normally itemize and now use the higher federal standard deduction end up losing about $8,000 to $10,000 of itemized deductions on their Virginia return because Virginia forces you to use the state's standard deduction if you used the standard deduction on your federal return.

I've had at least two or three returns where the itemized deductions might have been just $500 short of the federal standard deduction. I forced the use of itemized deductions, which increased the federal tax but reduced the state tax by a lot more. In one case, the federal tax went down too because the investment interest deduction offset investment income when computing the Net Investment Income (Rich People) Tax. I thought that was amazing. LOL