Reports

New York State’s “Indigent Care Pool” doles out more than $1 billion a year in grants to hospitals, ostensibly to reimburse them for providing free care to the poor and uninsured. But most of the time, how much money a hospital receives bears no relation to how much charity care it delivers. Read More

Local government is a labor-intensive business, and employee compensation is the single biggest element of most municipal budgets. The 2016-17 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

Nearly half of the 669 school districts seeking voter approval for budgets on Tuesday, May 16 are presenting spending plans that call for increasing property taxes as high as the 2011 property tax cap law allows, according to an analysis released today by the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More

Reform in the shape of a block grant would replace the current system of open-ended matching aid, which has been blamed for encouraging overspending and gamesmanship as some states sought to maximize their federal funding. A prime example of the phenomenon is New York, which operates one of the costliest Medicaid programs in the country. Read More

Nearly two-thirds of New York State’s tax receipts are now generated by the personal income tax, or PIT, which relies disproportionately on the highest-earning one percent of New York taxpayers. This paper presents charts and tables highlighting notable trends in state PIT data in light of proposals to extend or increase the state’s so-called “millionaire tax,” along with scheduled PIT rate reductions in tax brackets below the highest income levels. Read More