Commentary

There’s an obvious irony — not to mention an obvious political motive — in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s choice of his Republican predecessor, former Gov. George Pataki, to co-chair a Tax Relief Commission that’s supposed to recommend tax cuts for next year’s state budget. Read More

New York imposes the nation’s heaviest big-city tax burden — which, in turn, is a major component of the Big Apple’s notoriously high cost of living. Read More

By a variety of measures, New York is easily the nation's most heavily taxed big city. In devising a strategy for competing economically on both a global and regional basis, New York’s next mayor needs to recognize that the city can’t tax with impunity... Read More

Mayor Michael Bloomberg warned last week that if New York City fails to control unsustainable employee compensation costs, it could find itself trapped in the same "downward cycle" as bankrupt Detroit... Read More

No city in America can match New York’s broad array of taxes—more typical of a state than of a municipal government. Most New York City residents and businesses are subject to combined state and local tax rates far exceeding national norms. Such high taxes are a headwind against economic growth: they add to overhead, cut into profits, and make it costlier to employ people. Read More

Among the things New Yorkers will really need over the next four years is a city controller who’s willing to be a forceful and effective watchdog and advocate for taxpayers. Unfortunately, personal peccadilloes aside, Eliot Spitzer’s record as governor of New York raises serious questions of his suitability for this particular job. Read More

New York's mayoral candidates have paid surprisingly little attention to one issue that really sets the Big Apple apart: an extraordinarily heavy tax burden. No other big city in the country imposes such a broad array of taxes at such high levels, piling its own levies on top of those collected by Albany. For example, corporations pay a combined rate of 17.5 percent on net income allocated to New York City, roughly double the average in most of the country. At the same time, the city's property tax is engineered to fall most heavily on commercial property and apartment buildings -- contributing to sky-high rents in both categories... Read More

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said that his proposal to allow up to three casinos in upstate New York will "create thousands of new jobs where they are needed most." Now comes the small print: it turns out those jobs will be controlled mainly by the state's politically powerful labor unions, whose support the governor presumably is courting for the constitutional amendment that voters will be asked to approve this fall to legalize casino gambling on a broader scale. Read More

Under ObamaCare, the promise ran, if you have coverage you like, you’ll be able to keep it. That turned out, of course, to be untrue. Now everyone from businesses to unions is scrambling to find a survival strategy before the law’s implementation come January. Read More

When a government watchdog as knowledgeable as Steven Greenhut, a Bloomberg View contributor, writes that California deserves to knock New York out of last place in rankings of state business climates, it’s tempting to agree. If only he had a stronger case. Read More

Gov. Cuomo said last week that he’ll propose a “financial restructuring group” to help fiscally distressed local governments pursue options that would include “consolidation, mergers, shared services, reduced workforces, fewer elected officials.” Read More

A senior Albany lawmaker disclosed last week that he wants to investigate a new taxpayer-funded deal that will give state officials the right to use a luxury box at the Buffalo Bills' stadium. Read More