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
Category: Commentary
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
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
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
Amid the generally sunny reviews surrounding this year's session of the New York state Legislature, there was little for taxpayers to applaud--and plenty to be concerned about for the future. Read More
Saddled with yet another high-priced mandate from Albany, Mayor Giuliani and the City Council are rethinking their tax-cutting agenda. But curtailing tax cuts now would represent a step backward from policies that have contributed to the city's strongest private-sector employment growth in a half century. Read More
AL Gore: $500 billion in tax cuts. George W. Bush: $1.3 trillion. Hillary Clinton: $496 billion. Rick Lazio: $776 billion to more than $1 trillion, depending on whom you believe and how you count. Read More