Question: What's worse than yet another tax hike in tax-plagued New York?
Answer: Yet another tax hike presented as a tax cut.
That's the not-so-funny punchline the state faces this week as Albany prepares to hit New Yorkers again with a new budget deal. The new tax hike takes the form of a second extension of the "temporary" millionaire's tax that was first imposed in 2009 and renewed by Gov. Cuomo in 2011.
Of course, the governor won't call this a tax hike. He'll try to steer attention to smaller cuts that might offset the hike. His folks will also claim it shouldn't count as a tax increase because it's simply keeping in place a tax that's already there.
AP
Andrew Cuomo
One problem: The governor himself is on record as rejecting that argument as phony.
During his campaign, he made his case clear. "It's a new tax. It was supposed to sunset. If it doesn't sunset, it's a new tax."
On Inauguration Day, he again rejected the fake idea that extending a temporary tax was not in fact a tax increase. "I understand the semantics argument," he said. "I say no new taxes, period."
We agreed with Cuomo then. And we applauded when he declared, "You are kidding yourself if you think you can be one of the highest-taxed states in the nation, have a reputation for being anti-business — and have a rosy economic future."
Today it's a different story. Today Cuomo presides over a New York that a brand-new Tax Foundation report ranks as having the nation's highest state and local tax burden. The same Tax Foundation ranks our business climate dead last.
On top of this, the extension of a millionaire's tax comes right after New York's top earners have been hit by an increase in their federal taxes. Our guess is that the real result of any action in Albany will be to boost home sales in income-tax-free Florida, a popular refuge for so many of our most successful citizens.
We believe Andrew Cuomo had it right when he said extending the millionaire's tax was a tax hike — and that New York was kidding itself if it thought that it could go on this way without hurting the economy. Which is why we can't agree with him and the rest of Albany for trying to pretend otherwise today.
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