The golden goose can fly. For the first time ever, all three elements of a successful post-industrial urban economy — capital, high-income labor …
The golden goose can fly. For the first time ever, all three elements of a successful post-industrial urban economy — capital, high-income labor and financial transactions — are almost instantly mobile. It’s about the worst time ever to attempt to impose multiple untested new taxes on all three elements, but that’s what New York’s ascendant political class wants. The Invest in Our New York Act is a package of six bills hiking state taxes by $50 billion a year. Numbers out of context are meaningless. Why not raise taxes by $200 billion, or heck, $90 trillion? But in the context of the New York state budget, $50 billion is an unprecedented hike. Without the pandemic and lockdowns, the state likely would have taken in $90 billion in taxes this coming fiscal year, meaning the bill’s proponents want to raise taxes by close to 60 percent. A sample of the new taxes: first, on high-income labor. A single filer with $1 million in income would see a 23 percent state tax hike, to 8.41 percent, up from 6.85. A filer making $10 million would see a 48 percent hike, to 12.14 percent, up from 8.82 percent. Second, on financial capital. A yearly “billionaire’s tax” (requiring a constitutional amendment) would levy a new 15 percent annual tax on billionaires’ growth in wealth for that year. That is, if one of New York’s 120 billionaires see his assets grow from $1 billion to $1.
