If January is any gauge, the 2015 battle over New York tax policy should be a doozy.

It’s a fight guaranteed to be filled with the kind of horsetrading that will make this winter in Albany worth watching.

The flurry of activity Wednesday, the day Gov. Andrew Cuomo delivered his State of the State and budget address, showed just how high the stakes will be for Lower Hudson Valley residents. Two initiatives — the education tax credit and the property-tax circuit breaker — will have a substantial impact on our region if approved.

The property-tax circuit breaker will provide tax relief averaging $1,119 to suburban homeowners earning up to $250,000 whose property taxes exceed 6 percent of their income. But Cuomo’s proposal would grant the credit only in jurisdictions that comply with the state’s 2 percent tax cap, a hurdle local officials say will become tougher to achieve in light of burgeoning state mandates.

Cuomo’s support for the education tax credit — a proposal favored by New York Catholic bishops and some of America’s wealthiest residents — was announced not long after the Republican-led Senate passed its version of the bill, with the support of all four Democratic senators from Westchester and Rockland counties.

The Senate action Wednesday showed just how important the Republican-led body views the tax-credit plan, which failed to come to a vote in 2014. It lets individuals and corporations get a tax credit of 90 percent for donations up to $1 million to either individual public schools and school foundations or organizations that will provide scholarships for students attending private and parochial schools.

Cuomo’s support for the education tax credit by no means guarantees its passage, as the Democratic-led Assembly has opposed it. And Cuomo has packaged his version of the tax-credit legislation in his comprehensive education-reform package that includes New York’s Dream Act, which would provide an estimated $27 million in state college scholarship assistance for the children of undocumented immigrants.

State aid for those high school graduates is anathema to Senate Republicans, who cudgeled Democrats with inflammatory mailings in the 2014 campaign over their support for such scholarships.

“It looks like Albany wedge politics at its worst,” said Ronald Deutsch, executive director of the Albany-based Fiscal Policy Institute. “The Senate wants the education tax credit but they don’t want the Dream Act.”

The circuit-breaker plan, championed for a dozen years by Assemblywoman Sandy Galef, D-Ossining, faces similar tensions. Democrats long have wanted property-tax relief tied to a homeowner’s income as a fairer way to help those struggling with the burden of high property taxes. But Cuomo has linked the circuit breaker to his tax cap, which has restrained government spending and is strongly opposed by New York State United Teachers, one of the state Democrats’ strongest allies.

Cuomo’s circuit breaker for 2015 would bring savings to 30 percent of households — about 139,000 — in Westchester and Rockland, according to his presentation Wednesday. No figures were available for Putnam County.

Here’s how the circuit breaker works: Let’s say a Westchester family with $100,000 in income pays $8,000 in property taxes. The circuit breaker would apply to taxes that exceed 6 percent of the family’s income. In this case, that’s $2,000. Cuomo’s plan would offer credits on the family’s income tax valued at half the overage, or $1,000.

Deutsch said his think tank has identified 700,000 New York households that pay more than 10 percent of their income in property taxes.

The circuit breaker also could fuel intergenerational and regional inequities. E.J. McMahon, executive director of the Albany-based Empire Center, says it will favor downstate homeowners in high-taxed counties, like those in the Lower Hudson Valley. Those most likely to benefit will be the region’s senior citizens, whose incomes have dropped in retirement and who live in homes they bought decades earlier that now carry hefty property-tax bills. Many of these homeowners already enjoy substantial tax savings through the state Enhanced STAR property-tax program.

“It’s going to perpetuate generational inequities,” McMahon said. “Younger people are going to be less likely to get it.”

© 2015 The Journal News