Yes, if you itemize, federal taxes limit your total itemized deduction for state income tax, property tax, personal use tax to a maximum of $10k (I forget what SALT stands for but it’s the amount you can deduct for your state income tax and property taxes)
A standard deduction is now $25.9k … So unless your annual mortgage interest on your primary is more than $15.9k, or unless you have larger itemized deductions elsewhere (like charitable contributions), you would be better off taking the standard deduction versus itemizing your deductions …and then if you take standard deduction, the SALT deduction wouldn’t even come into play for your federal taxes. Examples for where you would take standard deduction is that if you either have no mortgage on your primary or are close to paying it off such that the annual mortgage interest on the remaining loan is very low….because again before with SALT, you could deduct the full amount of your state income tax paid that years now you are limited to only $10k for that category, which I’d you have no mortgage and not significant charitable contributions, would make it much less than the 25.9k standard deduction.
Now you can always take standard deduction for federal and itemize your CA state taxes where SALT is still deductible fully, subject to AMT.
Also for rental properties, 0roperty taxes and mortgages are fully deductible as the cost of doing business with your rental.
