Month: January 2017

The lead editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal highlights the role that high taxes have played in driving migration trends out of New York and other high-tax states. Marginal tax rates matter, as the Journal very correctly points out. Unfortunately, in making this important point, the editorial relies a bit too much on a misinterpretation of migration data produced by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which tracks the movement of taxpayers among the 50 states. Read More

Ten days after the report's Halloween due date, Governor Cuomo's Division of the Budget (DOB) has just issued a mid-year Financial Plan update that might as well be wearing a fright mask. The update reduces revenue projections by $850 million this year, and by another $850 in each of the next two years, mostly as a result of an estimated $750 million drop in annual personal income tax reductions. Read More

Although Cuomo has said in recent weeks that he anticipates a $4 billion deficit in the coming fiscal year, E.J. McMahon of the fiscally conservative Empire Center think tank said DiNapoli’s updated estimates could indicate a shortfall of as much as $6.8 billion. The current budget totals $163 billion including federal aid. “The comptroller’s new estimate boosts the shortfall to $6.8 billion, by far the biggest prospective blob of red ink on Albany’s books since Cuomo took office,” McMahon said. Read More

New York State's budget gap through fiscal 2018-19 could be a whopping $4.6 billion worse than indicated by Governor Cuomo's latest Division of the Budget (DOB) projections, according to new estimates from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Read More

E.J. McMahon, research director of the Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative research group in Albany, said earlier this week eliminating the state and local income tax deduction would hurt New York. "From the state budget standpoint, still, if they repeal the income tax deduction, that is a huge threat to New York more than any other state to our tax base, and that's because the state has become dangerously over-reliant on taxes paid by the highest-earning 1 percent," McMahon said. Read More