As shown below, the highest-earning 1 percent of taxpayers (those with incomes above $750,000 or so as of 2007) accounted for nearly 40 percent of New York's total state income tax liability last year -- up from around 27 percent in the mid-1990s.  Read More
Research
New York is twice impacted by the collapsing world of complex finance: first for the obvious reason and second because in recent years, it has structured much of its own $54 billion in debt in a way that makes the city more acutely vulnerable to int Read More
The stock market is in the process of recovering roughly half of yesterday's losses based on investor hope that the financial bailout bill will be revived in Congress. But Nicole's in today's Post argues that the bailout, whenever it's passed, "co Read More
The of 's FDIC-brokered purchase of Wachovia point up some long-term implications for New York's economy. Specifically, in return for shouldering $270 billion in potential losses at Wachovia's property-related assets that would otherwise be Citi Read More
Wendell Cox ponders the question in . The short answer: very far, indeed, especially in markets where building is stringently regulated. Read More
State revenues could drop $3.5 billion over the next fiscal year as a result of the continuing financial crisis, according to a from state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. DiNapoli ends his report on what apparently is intended to be an upbeat note: Read More
The Post's Fred Dicker today that Paterson administration budget officials now believe New York State's 2008-09 budget gap will be in the neighborhood of $7 billion, up from a projected $5.5 billion in the wake of the Legislature's August s Read More
The story from today’s papers with the biggest potential long-term impact on New York’s economy doesn’t even contain the words “New York.” That’s Gillian Tett’s FT piece on global investors’ assessment of the credit of the United States of America. Read More
This report reviews the impact of federal tax cuts on New York State since 2001 and looks at how the Empire State would be affected by the sharply divergent tax policy agendas of the 2008 presidential candidates, John McCain and Barack Obama. Estimates are provided for the direct New York impact of the candidates’ principal individual income tax proposals over the next two years. Read More
The collapse of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch and yesterday's 500- point drop in the Dow may yet prove to be the turning point in a long-overdue shakeout. If the optimists are right, a stronger and smarter securities industry will eventually emerge from the ruins of the last few months. Read More
Earlier in this decade, the last major change in federal tax policy helped bail New York out of its last Wall Street downturn. Will Washington help or hurt the city this time around? Read More
The financial-market implosion and the coming transformation of the securities industry will expose the fundamental flaw in New York State’s woefully overextended public finance model. The state budget is today geared to run on an ever-expanding stream of high-octane revenues from a Wall Street that no longer exists—and the rest of New York’s economy isn’t nearly robust enough to make up the difference. Read More