Tag: Taxes and Spending

Local government is a labor-intensive business, and employee compensation is the single biggest element of most municipal budgets. The 2013-14 edition of What They Make, the Empire Center's annual report on public payrolls, allows New York taxpayers to compare this key element of local government costs around the state... Read More

From New York’s standpoint, the best that can be said of last week’s federal tax hike is that it could’ve been worse. Taxes on the wealthy went up, but “wealthy” was defined as an adjusted gross income starting around $500,000 for married couples, instead of at the $250,000 level favored by President Obama. At least 150,000 New York state households, including small business owners, were thus let off the rate-hike hook — for now, at least. Read More

New York State’s personal income tax (PIT) collections in April were a whopping $1.3 billion lower than in the same month last year, according to state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s just-released monthly cash report.* Read More

Kathy Miller and her family moved to New York from Pennsylvania. She said they discovered that just about everything here is more expensive. "Income tax is the biggest," said Miller, of Ballston Lake. "It's double here than it is in Pennsylvania. Property taxes, school taxes, groceries, gas, even our car insurance is more in New York State." Read More