Empire Center President E.J. McMahon sat down with Time Warner Cable News reporter Geoff Redick to discuss the $350 checks that are being sent to certain households ahead of the 2014 election. Time Warner Cable subscribers can watch the clip here.

You may have gotten a very nice surprise in the mail recently: a $350 check! It’s courtesy the New York State government, but is it really all it’s cracked up to be?

“Well, it’s not real tax relief,” said E.J. McMahon, Empire Center for Public Policy.

E.J. McMahon’s got his check.

“Part of New York State’s ‘new effort’ to reduce taxes,” said McMahon. “Just a little over a month before Election Day, in hopes that you will think of your incumbent legislator and your governor on Election Day.”

The Family Tax Relief Credit was passed last year, and it’s rolling out now. But its benefit requirements are retroactive to 2012, because it is based on tax data and 2012 is the most recent tax data set the state has.

Here’s how it works:

Families who had at least one child under 17-years-old, and earned more than $40,000 but less than $300,000 — remember, this is all back in 2012, are now eligible to earn the $350 tax credit. But if you did not make at least $40,000 in 2012, or you didn’t have children under 17, or you even meet those conditions now but you did not back in 2012, you will not be receiving the $350 check.

“In order to create the gimmick — and it is a gimmick that they’ve created with this check — they had to jump through a bunch of administrative hoops to figure out who’d be qualified for it. And they best they could do was based on, who had a child under 17, in 2012,” said McMahon.

And, unlike normal tax credits, this one is not automatically in your annual refund, it’s a separate check, all its own.

“Why is this structured in a totally different way? Because the other one you don’t see — and politicians are convinced that you don’t appreciate what they call a tax cut, unless they put a check in your hand,” said McMahon.

Viewers reacted harshly on Facebook, when asked if they got the check and how they would spend it.

“What gets me is the $300,000 cut off. Do those people really need it?” one viewer wrote.

The governor’s office gave a statement saying, in part:
“This much needed relief is one of many steps taken by the governor to control and reduce taxes, and came as a result of four years of smart fiscal discipline.”

From the tax department:

“The state will pay for the credits in 2015, 2017 and 2018. The efforts to control spending growth by Cuomo’s administration absolutely make this credit possible.”

E.J. McMahon claims it’s a lot simpler than that.

“They extended a very significant tax increase on million-dollar earners, raising billions of dollars in extra revenues. They peeled a few hundred-million dollars off the top, and scattered it to everybody else,” said McMahon.

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