Government for sail?
State lawmakers missed the boat on some ambitious reform proposals in the state budget — but they managed to enact a tax break for luxury-yacht buyers.
After struggling to hash out details on Gov. Cuomo’s top priorities — education and ethics — and putting off other issues, New York’s elected officials easily came to an agreement on yachts.
The first $230,000 of all boat sales would still be fully taxed, but no sales tax would be collected on any purchase above that amount. The deal also applies to private plane sales.
Legislators defended the exemption as a job-protection measure.
“Right now, no one purchases their yachts in the state of New York because Florida offers a similar program,” Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) said.
“Florida has better weather than us, so people go and park their boats down there all year round. What this Error: Break shortcode syntax invalid does is give people incentive to buy a boat here in New York because they have incentive to keep it here and they’ll start paying taxes here in the state of New York and not to Florida.”
The law in Florida, which has a 6 percent sales tax, sets the maximum tax that can be collected on any boat sale at $18,000.
State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-LI) agreed with Heastie.
“It’s about job creation,” Skelos said. “Just like we have the film tax credit, we have other exemptions. It makes New York state competitive, and that would afford jobs for people who make above the minimum wage.”
But critics slammed the tax exemption as a giveaway to the rich.
“Once you go down this slippery slope, there’s no end to it. Now you have wealthy people who get a film tax credit getting a tax break on their yachts,” E.J. McMahon, of the Empire Center for Public Policy, said.
He pointed out there are lots of marinas for the well-to-do on the East End of Long Island.
Senate Democrats, in a sharp break with their Assembly colleagues, piled on the criticism.
“It seems like the yacht and airplane owner lobby is much more powerful than people thought,” said Mike Murphy, a spokesman for the Senate Dems.
“It is outrageous that we are giving yacht and airplane owners massive tax breaks while we refuse to provide a real minimum- wage increase or real property-tax relief.”
The left-leaning Working Families Party, which rarely sees eye-to-eye with the Empire Center, was on the same page this time.
“The governor and Legislature should be ashamed of a state budget that provides tax breaks for yachts and private jets while failing to raise the minimum wage,” said party co-chair Karen Scharff.
“This outrage proves once again the link between campaign donations from the wealthy and policies that increase inequality.”
© 2015 New York Post
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