Some like a new proposal to cut New York’s estate tax.

Others favor the recommendation to cap property taxes based on income — a “circuit breaker,” so to speak.

A report issued last week by one of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s two tax commissions has rekindled debate regarding taxes in the Empire State. Former Gov. George Pataki and former state Comptroller Carl McCall headed the commission.

E. J. McMahon, president of the Empire Center for Public Policy, praised the report’s recommendation the state cut the top estate-tax rate and raise the taxable estate threshold to federal levels.

“The Empire State would remain one of a very few jurisdictions still imposing any death tax, but it would at least take a smaller bite out of fewer estates,” he said in comments published in the New York Post.

Plan draws support and criticism

Ron Deutsch, executive director of New Yorkers for Fiscal Fairness, who heads a consortium of anti-property tax groups, said the commission’s detailed emphasis on those groups and companies was exactly what was wrong with the report.

“With 50 percent child-poverty rates in many of our upstate cities and record rates of homelessness and hunger, it is unconscionable that the commission would propose to give even more tax cuts to the wealthiest families and banks in our state,” he said in a statement.

Deutsch was as happy to see the inclusion of a tax “circuit breaker” concept he and other tax advocates long have championed as McMahon was dismissive of it.

McMahon called the circuit breaker, which is based on homeowner’s ability to pay, “not a tax cut but a tax shift — a subsidy for some homeowners financed mainly by state taxpayers.”

New Paltz Town Supervisor Susan Zimet, co-founder of taxnightmare.org, is a long-time advocate of the circuit breaker tax. She praised the report for addressing the issue of property tax reform, while criticizing it for not including sufficient detail about how it would work and who it would affect. She also said, ultimately, the circuit breaker, as originally conceived, always has been a short-term solution — a way to help ensure people don’t lose their homes while the state took action to take over paying for the educational system.

©2013 The Times Herald-Record