Pro-business groups say Gov. Andrew Cuomo‘s proposed budget would help reduce the high tax bill that can be incurred by dying in New York.

The Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon was joined by representatives of the state Farm Bureau and the National Federation of Independent Business at the Monday unveiling of a new report boosting Cuomo’s proposal to raise the threshold on the state’s current estate tax from $1 million to almost $6 million after a five-year phase-in to match the federal threshold (currently $5.34 million, and indexed to inflation). Also, Cuomo wants to reduce the maximum tax rate on estates from 16 percent to 10 percent.

McMahon noted that because of the disparity between the federal and the state estate tax thresholds, New York’s tax hit more estates in 2012 than the federal government taxed nationally — almost 4,000. The change to the state tax would knock out some 90 percent of estates subject to the tax in 2013, the Empire Center concludes.

“Far from being limited to what we would think of as the superwealthy, the estate tax hits a growing number of middle- and upper-middle-class households and small businesses and farmers,” said McMahon.

“When we have debates in Albany about millionaires … almost invariably people are referring to number of people who earn $1 million of income,” he continued. “But, in fact, the dictionary meaning of ‘millionaire’ and the estate tax definition of ‘millionaire’ is somebody who has more than $1 million in assets.”

Based on that standard — including assets such as home worth, business worth, life insurance, and investments such as retirement accounts — “there’s well over half a million New Yorkers who share in assets of $1 million or more,” McMahon said.

He noted that New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio‘s home in Brooklyn, purchased for roughly $700,000 in 2006, is now assessed at $1.4 million.

Jeff Williams, director of public policy for the Farm Bureau, said the estate tax made life difficult for farm families who are “land-rich, cash-poor,” and hastened the transfer of farmland to non-agricultural purposes such as housing developments.

Mike Durant, state director of the NFIB, said the change would similarly enhance the “multigenerational” nature of many small businesses in New York — especially upstate.

McMahon, a vocal critic of Cuomo’s property tax proposals, called the estate tax reforms the “purest play” — the most sound — among the proposed tax cuts in the executive budget.