E.J. McMahon, chief researcher for the Empire Center for Public Policy, said the Assembly proposal amounts to "tax and spend fantasy." Read More
Tag: Taxes and Spending
State lawmakers spent $7.8 million on postage for campaign-style mailings to constituents in the six-month run-up to last year’s elections, according to data added today to SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. Read More
“The premise of the pied-à-terre tax — get money from wealthy nonresidents — sounds reasonable on the surface,” said E.J. McMahon of the fiscally conservative Empire Center for Public Policy think tank. “The main problem with the idea is the assumption that an entirely new tax is needed in what’s already the nation’s most heavily taxed and wealthy big city, in order to fund the capital plan of a transit system that has yet to demonstrate it can effectively spend the money it already has.” Read More
Although the IRS ruling hasn’t formally been made final yet and Bellone is promising a legal fight, E.J. McMahon of the Empire Center, an anti-tax think tank, said Suffolk taxpayers should be skeptical of putting money into the proposed charitable fund. “Any contribution to something like the Suffolk County fund is by no means guaranteed a tax deduction, so the message to taxpayers is don’t count on it,” McMahon said in an email. He called Bellone’s plan “nothing new — basically a Suffolk echo of Cuomo a year ago.” Read More
E.J. McMahon of the fiscally conservative Empire Center noted that the study relied on data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, whose methodology he described as "lousy." McMahon further asserted that New York state contains multiple regional economies and differences in tax codes that make such statewide analyses inaccurate. Read More
Government watchdog E.J. McMahon, of the Empire Center, warned that the Amazon ordeal would be noticed by other firms. “The Amazon fiasco definitely sent a signal, and it’s not a good signal from multiple angles,” McMahon said. “Governor DeSantis couldn’t have picked a better time to work on poaching New York businesses, especially high earners in finance. More than a few will no doubt find it tempting to at least listen to Florida’s pitch.” Read More
According to the highly regarded Empire Center for Public Policy, the Cuomo administration, over its first eight years, wasted more than $10 billion in public funding and tax breaks on these types of economic development boondoggles. Read More
The Governor announced that the state has to deal with a 2.3-billion-dollar revenue shortfall which he blamed on the federal tax overhaul passed late in 2017. EJ McMahon, Founder and Research Director of the Empire Center for Public Policy, shared his analysis of the situation. Read More