To hear Gov. Andrew Cuomo tell it this week, the proposed $152 billion budget includes a tax rate reduction for those who earn $40,000 and above.
“At the same time, we do a Middle Class Tax Cut for 6 million New Yorkers. From $40,000 to $150,000, the rate would go from 6.85 to 6.45 and $150-300,000, 6.85 to 6.65,” Cuomo said according to his office’s transcript of the budget presentation. “And these would be phased in and they would continue to drop as the years go on.”
He added later: “On the legislative agenda side, we’ll reduce middle class taxes, we’ll have a historic high in education aid.”
This is all true in an academic sense, but also true in the same way the minimum wage is increasing this year.
In other words, as EJ McMahon at The Empire Center pointed out this morning, these tax cuts for middle earners were already approved in last year’s budget plan.
Indeed, the very rates that Cuomo talked about on Wednesday night, phased in through 2025, will begin in the 2018 tax year.
The tax cut talk came as Cuomo was also pushing for the extension of a surcharge on those who earn more than $1 million a year, due to expire at the end of the year.
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