Businesses in New York state are calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo to not enact a range of tax increases the state’s legislature passed in mid-March.
The legislature raised corporate franchise and income tax rates to add $6.5 billion to the state’s treasury next year; a proposed surcharge on capital-gains income would raise a similar amount.
Cuomo has proposed a budget for the next fiscal year that would raise $1.5 billion through a temporary surcharge on annual incomes above $4 million.
In a letter to Cuomo and Democratic legislative leaders, 250 of the state’s highest-profile executives said the tax hikes would jeopardize the state’s economic recovery, and the new federal $1.9-trillion stimulus makes any increases unnecessary.
The executives also warned that the tax hikes could persuade high-income earners who left the state during the pandemic to decide to change their permanent residences to lower-tax states, depriving New York of more revenue than the new taxes would bring in.
“Many members of our workforce have resettled their families in other locations, generally with far lower taxes than New York, and the proposed tax increases will make it harder to get them to return,” the executives wrote in their letter.
The state’s highest-earning 5 percent of workers pay about 60 percent of the state’s $50-billion annual revenue raised through income taxes, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The letter was signed by the chief executives of BlackRock, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, and News Corp., among others.
TRENDPOST: As economies go down, politicians will keep pushing for higher property, sales, and school taxes. Cities and states with the lowest taxes will attract both businesses and individuals wanting to escape high-tax areas.
We continue to forecast strong anti-tax, anti-vax, anti-immigration, anti-establishment political movements… many of which will attract Donald Trump supporters which are a major sector of society.
For more information and forecasts of taxes, see our new article, “DEMOCRATS MULL TAX HIKES.”
