The millionaires must pay

People of New York, remember how your lawmakers readied for the cataclysmic storm massing in Washington and heading this way — severe health-care funding cuts combined with sweeping federal spending retrenchment hitting everything from environmental cleanup to public-housing funds.

The first imperative as we hunker down must be preserving the state millionaire’s tax, which generates nearly $4 billion a year in revenue from those who can most afford it.

The nearly 9% surcharge on super-earners, first imposed in 2009 and renewed in 2012 with some tweaks courtesy of Gov. Cuomo, will expire at the end of this year unless the Legislature acts.

Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan claims that’s just fine by him and his Republicans.

“We support cutting taxes, not raising them,” chimed his spokesman — conveniently omitting who is affected, namely fewer than 48,000 individuals and households earning $1 million and $2 million or more respectively, who pay a surcharge of 8.82% on income earned above those amounts.

They’re content to let taxes for those fortunate few plunge back to less than 7%, and blow a multi-billion dollar hole in the state budget.

For their part, Democrats who control the Assembly, joined by Mayor de Blasio, want to ratchet up the tax surcharge at higher incomes — to 9.32% over $5 million, 9.82% over $10 million and 10.32% over $100 million, shaving a billion or two dollars more from tippity-top earners.

That’s nobly progressive in principle, but only if gazillionaires stay put to pay instead of moving to tax-friendlier climes, of which there are plenty.

Sending top earners fleeing is no risk to take casually, with earners at more than $1 million accounting for $59 billion in income taxes the state collected in 2014 alone — 39% of the total.

Dire predictions the first millionaires’ tax would send the uberrich sailing off in their luxury yachts have not come to pass. But everyone has a breaking point. Turn up the dial, and who knows.

Demanding a bigger millionaires’ tax also hurts de Blasio’s worthwhile case to enhance the mansion tax, a modest one-time fee on the sale of luxury New York City real estate that would, as in other global competitor cities, wrest some public good out of the craze to build and buy high-end condos.

Priorities: The winds are picking up. The millionaires’ tax is what counts most now.