In early February, the state Senate Majority put forth a comprehensive “Jobs and Opportunity Agenda” calling for new tax cuts, broad-based regulatory reform, workforce development strategies, and a major refocusing of the state’s economic development initiatives including shutting down the controversial START-UP New York program.
A study released last week by the financial news site 24/7 Wall Street (247wallst.com) is a reminder why an agenda likes ours is fundamental to the future. The bottom line of this new study could not be more straightforward: New York State has the highest tax burden in America.
New York taxpayers on average pay 12.7 percent of their income in state and local taxes – more than taxpayers in every other state in the nation do. Specifically, according to the study, New York is the second-highest ranked state in income tax collections per capita and fifth highest in property tax collections per capita.
In his very first State of the State address in 2011, newly elected Governor Andrew Cuomo said, “New York has no future as the tax capital of the nation. Our young people will not stay. Our business will not come. This has to change…the people of this state simply cannot afford to pay any more taxes, period.”
“New York has no future as the tax capital of the nation.” It produced one of the best applause lines in any State of the State message ever and it set the stage for true progress in New York on cutting taxes.
Clearly, however, the tax cut momentum has faltered. In fact, in his 2018-19 proposed state budget, Governor Cuomo includes upwards of $1 billion in higher taxes and fees. Equally critical, the governor’s commitment over the past eight years has simply not been aggressive enough on fundamental actions like comprehensive mandate relief and regulatory reform. The governor created, with great fanfare, a Mandate Relief Team in 2011 and, as part of the agreement to enact the two-percent local property tax cap, he promised a comprehensive rollback of the unfunded state mandates that keep local property taxes high.
The Mandate Relief Team failed. The mandate relief promise has mostly not been kept.
New York cannot continue as one of the highest taxed and overregulated states in America. It’s that simple. We are losing our way again after eight years of the Cuomo administration. We are not staying focused on getting residents and businesses out from under one of the nation’s heaviest tax and regulatory burdens.
That’s the message delivered by the 24/7 Wall Street study.
In response, the Senate’s “Jobs and Opportunity” focus in 2018 includes, among other proposals:
- Ø legislation I sponsor to enact new tax cuts for small businesses and farms including, among others, increasing the corporate tax threshold from $390,000 to $500,000 and lowering the rate to 2.5 percent;
- Ø allowing real property owned by a small business to be eligible for the STAR property tax savings program;
- Ø extending the zero percent Corporate Franchise Tax parity to all manufacturers in New York regardless of how they are organized. Currently, only approximately 25 percent of manufacturers – those organized as C corps - can receive the zero percent rate on business income; and
- Ø reforming the regulatory, licensing, and permitting processes to make them easier to understand, more responsive to business concerns, increase transparency, improve consistency, and reduce overly burdensome or unnecessary requirements.
It is time to reorder New York State’s priorities so that we tax less, regulate less, mandate less, and create more and better jobs.
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The 58th Senate District, one of New York State's geographically largest legislative districts, encompasses the following five counties across the Southern Tier and Finger Lakes regions: Chemung, Schuyler, Steuben and Yates counties, and a portion of Tompkins County (the city and town of Ithaca, and the towns of Enfield, Newfield and Ulysses).
