“Mandate relief remains elusive,” is one of the state-related headlines in today’s Albany Times Union — and that much, at least, is true. Unfortunately, the articlebeneath the headline repeats a familiar canard about the origins of the Triborough Amendment. Read More
The White House says that if an automatic budgetsequester is triggered in Washington later this week, New York ultimately will lose $275 million in federal aid. Read More
The one promising new wrinkle in the upstate economic development plan unveiled today by Governor Andrew Cuomo is the offer of full (if impermanent) exemptions from state business and personal income taxes, as well as sales taxes, to firms that expand into designated Tax Free Zones at colleges, universities and “strategically located state-owned” properties. Read More
The report of Governor Cuomo’s Tax Reform and Fairness Commission is a useful, well researched collection of interesting and provocative ideas — some much better than others. Not a bad place to start a further exchange of ideas leading to a fruitful debate on the topic, assuming such a thing is possible in Albany. Read More
The Pataki-McCall tax commission report unveiled on Long Island today is a decidedly mixed bag.. Read More
The agreed-upon Tier 6 bill restores much of the benefit reduction originally proposed by Governor Cuomo–especially for career employees. Read More
The New York State Professional Firefighters Association (PFFA) was not at all pleased by the Empire Center’s news release last week highlighting the generous pensions of recently retired local police and firefighters. Read More
For taxpayers in New York State’s top personal income tax bracket, the new federal tax law will drive the combined federal and state marginal tax rate to within a percentage point of 50 percent, its highest level in 27 years. Read More