Tax ‘ripoff’

Blaz, Chuck lead rally against GOP’s ‘dagger to heart of N.Y.’

MAYOR DE BLASIO and New York’s congressional Democrats rallied at City Hall to bash the GOP tax overhaul making its way through Congress.

“This plan takes dead aim at New York City,” de Blasio said Sunday in the lobby of City Hall. “It will rip off the middle class.”

The $1.5 trillion tax plan would slash the tax rate for corporations from 35% to 20%. For regular taxpayers, it would tweak tax brackets and double the standard deduction while eliminating a number of popular tax breaks.

A big worry for New York pols is part of the plan that would eliminate the ability to deduct state and local income taxes on a federal tax return. The Senate version of the bill would also nix the ability to deduct property taxes, while the House version would cap it at $10,000.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, said the votes of 15 House Republicans from New York and New Jersey would determine if the tax overhaul passes or fails.

Those pols “have our state’s fate in their hands,” he said. “If state and local is in this bill, it’s a dagger to the heart of New York. It’s a dagger to the heart of New Jersey. And they, those 15 have to choose their states over the rich special interests who are trying to push them around.”

The city’s only Republican member of Congress, Staten Island Rep. Dan Donovan, opposes the bill but didn’t attend Sunday’s rally.

The plan is projected to add $1.7 billion to the federal budget deficit, including interest.

“The Republican tax plan will force our children and grandchildren to shoulder more than a trillion dollars in additional debt, simply to get tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires and special interest corporations,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-Brooklyn).

But Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican member of the Senate Finance Committee, said getting rid of the state and local deduction makes sense.

“There’s no good reason why federal taxpayers all across the country should have to subsidize, have to pay a higher federal tax rate, to subsidize those municipalities that choose to have high taxes,” he said on the John Catsimatidis AM 970 radio show.

“I think it’s good policy to get rid of this deduction. It allows us to lower the total tax burden, which is more fair.”