Republicans promised a middle-class tax cut. So far, they have created mostly middle-class confusion.

Both the evolving House bill and the emerging Senate plan would slash taxes for businesses and many wealthy individuals. What they would mean for the middle class, however, is less clear. The plans feature a spider web of intersecting and offsetting changes to the tax code that many taxpayers — and even many tax accountants — are struggling to untangle.

This much is clear: Either version of the bill would be bad news for residents of high-tax, high-cost states, most of which tend to elect Democrats. Both bills would eliminate the deduction for state and local income and sales taxes — not a big deal in low-tax states such as Florida and Texas, but a potentially huge difference for many taxpayers in high-tax California and New York.

The Senate bill would go further by also eliminating the deduction for state and local property taxes. That would be especially hard on states such as New Jersey that have high housing costs and that rely heavily on property taxes to fund their governments. (States won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 accounted for two-thirds of state and local tax deductions in 2015. They accounted for half of total income.)