“New York’s school districts are receiving record-high levels of aid from Albany to educate fewer students, and our school taxes are still climbing,” said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center. Read More
Tag: Taxes and Spending
After months of behind-the-scenes work, the state Department of Taxation and Finance is circulating a "discussion draft" of proposed bill language creating a new form of state tax designed to preserve some federal income tax deductibility for state and local taxes (SALT) paid by partners in unincorporated firms. Read More
Cuomo has further boosted the state’s already heavy reliance on taxes paid by income millionaires. This has made Albany’s revenue base more fragile and volatile — a problem aggravated by the new federal cap on state and local tax deductions, which effectively raises total tax rates for New York’s highest earners. Read More
Over the weekend, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York's Legislatureagreed on a $168.3 billion budget for the 2019 fiscal year. Before Albany moves on to the next thing - which could be nothing in an election year - let's revisit what it just did and what it means. Read More
The Empire Center has updated its online Spend-O-Meter to reflect the record size of New York’s newly enacted $168.3 billion budget for fiscal 2019. Read More
Count New York’s government-employee unions among the biggest winners of this year’s budget battle — with taxpayers as the big losers. In the dead of night, the Legislature adopted language that aims to protect public unions’ political power from a likely US Supreme Court ruling. Read More
As Albany lawmakers consider imposing costly new taxes and mandates on health insurance, a report from the New York State Health Foundation offers a timely reminder: The state’s insurance premiums are already among the highest in the country, and rising fast. Read More
Even before Donald Trump became President, congressional Republican tax reformers had been aiming to get rid of or at least tightly curtail the state and local tax deduction, known as SALT, that mainly benefits residents of New York and other high-tax blue states. Read More