Down to brass tax
Before COVID pushed the deadline ahead by a month, today was the deadline to file your tax returns. In honor of normal Tax Day, we examined mayoral candidates’ tax plans. The takeaway: If you think you’re already taxed heavily for the privilege of living in the five boroughs, hold onto your wallet.
Mayors can’t raise taxes on their own, as Bill de Blasio’s experience has reminded us; they have to convince the Legislature to act. But a mayor has leverage, so his or her priorities matter greatly.
Before this year’s state budget, Maya Wiley, Scott Stringer and Dianne Morales supported the “Invest in our NY” Act, a suite of bills in Albany to raise and create a half-dozen new taxes, including: imposing progressively higher tax rates on people earning $300,000 and up; taxing income from investments at the same rate as wages; imposing a stock transfer tax; raising corporate tax rates, and more. Kathryn Garcia, Ray McGuire, Shaun Donovan and Andrew Yang expressed skepticism about the need to raise taxes on the wealthy in this year’s budget, a healthy instinct given the windfall in federal funding, while Eric Adams proposed a two-year income tax increase on New Yorkers earning $5 million or more.
Stringer is asking Albany to layer on several new taxes, including a payroll tax on employers with payrolls of $2.5 million and higher to help fund a universal child-care plan and eliminating the mortgage recording tax, while increasing real property transfer tax rates on “high value” properties. All are risky indeed at a time when the city’s economy stands on the precipice.
Adams wants to enact a new tax on streaming online services to fund sales tax holidays for small businesses, and a “data tax” on tech companies to help fund better remote learning. Meanwhile, Yang says he’d pressure Albany to make landlords who leave commercial properties unoccupied pay the piper, which, if done smartly, makes good sense.
One tax policy area where mayors do wield considerable power is over property taxes. In response to recent questions from The News, every leading Dem candidate called the current system unfair, but three top contenders, Yang, Adams and Stringer, were cagey with answers. Their chickening out could come home to roost.