If you’re a state legislator who’s trying to draw some gerrymandered congressional districts along partisan lines, there’s generally two ways that you can accomplish it—crackin’ or packin’.
If you choose to participate in crackin’, your goal is to “crack” the opposition party by spreading their registered voters out into multiple congressional districts so that they make up the majority in as few districts as possible.
As an example, in the blue state of Maryland where Democrats control the state legislature, they’ve drawn the districts to dilute, or crack, the Republican vote as much as they can, resulting in a few hideously-shaped monstrosities like their 3rd congressional district, the single worst gerrymander in the nation. It’s been described by a federal judge as a “broken-winged pterodactyl lying prostrate across the state.” See for yourself:
This has allowed Maryland to consistently guarantee six Democrats in Congress, one Republican, and one swing district.
On the other hand, it’s possible that the opposition party’s voters might be geographically distributed in such a way that crackin’ is difficult…in which case you might have to do some packin’ instead. This is where, instead of diluting the opposition vote, you try to concentrate it by shoving as many opposing voters as possible into a district or two, understanding that your party is always going to lose those districts, but all of the remaining districts in the state will be much more easily carried by your party.
Take for example Republican-controlled Ohio, where the state legislature has successfully quarantined enough Democrats in their “snake by the lake” 9th District to all but ensure a congressional delegation of 10 Republicans, 3 Democrats, and 3 swing districts:
And as you might guess, there’s a financial lesson to be learned from all of this crackin’ and packin’. Because when it comes to maximizing the deductions on your tax return, most people crack when they should instead pack.
Consider a couple who has the following potential deductions on their taxes this year:
$6500 property tax bill
$9000 in charitable giving
$4500 in mortgage interest
$3500 in state income taxes
That’s a total of $23,500 in deductions. But for a couple filing a joint tax return, the standard deduction is $25,900, meaning that they wouldn’t itemize deductions, they’d just take the bigger standard deduction.
But that’s because they were crackin’ instead of packin’. In other words, they diluted their deductions by letting them be uniform every calendar year.
What if they plan ahead for some packin’ next year? Here’s how they’d do it:
- Don’t pay this year’s property tax bill until January, meaning it will count as a deduction for 2023. Then pay the property tax bill again in December of 2023, doubling their property tax deduction for the year.
- In December of 2023, pre-pay their charitable contributions for all of 2024, meaning they’ll double up their charitable giving for the year as well.
Now they can itemize deductions in 2023 with a total of $39,000. They’ll have very little to deduct the following year in 2024, but that’s ok because they’ll still get to claim the standard $25,900. If they “pack” like this every other year, they’ll get an extra $13,000 in deductions every two years, which could represent a reduced tax bill of several thousand dollars, depending on their tax bracket.
If you’re a state legislator, there are laws that prevent you from getting too extreme with your crackin’ and packin’. But there’s nothing stopping you from doing it with your taxes.