Governor Andrew Cuomo still refuses to support taxes on the ultra-wealthy, because rich people already have one foot out of New York City, and he fears they'll leave for good if their taxes go up.
"I literally talk to people all day long who are in their Hamptons house who also lived here, or in their Hudson Valley house or in their Connecticut weekend house, and I say, 'You gotta come back, when are you coming back?'" Cuomo said during a press conference on Monday, when asked if he'd support a slate of tax hike proposals on the wealthy.
"'We'll go to dinner, I'll buy you a drink,'" Cuomo said, reenacting his conversations. "'Come over, I'll cook.' They're not coming back right now. And you know what else they're thinking? If I stay there, I pay a lower income tax because they don't pay the New York City surcharge."
Dozens of lawmakers have pledged their support for some kind of wealth tax to help fill a two-year, $30 billion budget shortfall created by the COVID-19 crisis. There's a billionaires' tax to create a fund for workers excluded from typical government relief, an ultra-millionaires' tax for education funding, and a host of other proposals that advocates say could raise as much as $35 billion a year, rather than resorting to budget cuts.
But Cuomo reiterated previous claims that the one-percenters will just get out of paying such taxes by fleeing the city or state, since many already have. Instead, Cuomo wants the federal government and New York's congressional reps to send billions of dollars in aid to New York. But Congress and the White House are still hashing out what another coronavirus stimulus package would look like as weekly $600 pandemic payments for those out-of-work just expired.
"I'm not going to let Washington off the hook," Cuomo said. "They have to deliver. We have federal representatives, we have senators and we have congresspeople. We pay them to pass a piece of legislation that's going to help New York. It's simple. If the legislation is not going to help New York, you know what I say to them, don't pass it."
He said the fear was once that rich people would flee NYC—echoing previous debunked claims. But now the "burden [has] shifted" since people are already living in their second homes.
"Our population, 1 percent of the population pays 50 percent of the taxes," Cuomo said.
While Cuomo spends his days talking to New Yorkers in their second homes, 1.5 million people in New York are still collecting unemployment benefits, and about half-a-million jobs in NYC are not expected to return by the end of the year.
Spokespeople for Governor Cuomo have not returned our request for comment.
Some of the richest people in America have seen their wealth increase during the pandemic.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos's net worth rose from $113 to $157 billion from March to June. Zoom's founder Eric Yuan has gained $2.5 billion during the pandemic, according to Business Insider, which found that billionaires in the U.S. have gotten $637 billion richer.
"During the course of this pandemic, the unemployment rate is not the only metric that has increased—ironically, so has the individual and accumulated wealth of the nation's wealthiest individuals," Assemblymember Aravella Simotas, who is sponsoring the ultramillionaires' tax, said during a virtual news conference about the wealth tax legislation on Monday. Those out of work, she added, "are struggling to pay their rent, to buy food, to pay medical bills."
New York is home to 119 billionaires, according to the group Americans for Tax Fairness. Forty-three of those billionaire families have donated more than $8 million to Cuomo's campaigns over the years, according to a recent report in The Guardian. Cuomo's office told the site that the suggestion that his campaign donations are related to his opposition to raising taxes on billionaires is "stupid and insulting."
James Parrott, the director of economic and fiscal policies at the New School's Center for New York City Affairs, said he understood that the governor is "trying to get as much fiscal relief out of Washington as possible," but that Cuomo's comments on the tax burden of the wealthy should be put into context. While the wealthy pay disproportionately more in personal income taxes, they also account for the largest shares of income, "so their share of the income tax is not that much greater than their share of income," Parrott said.
"When you look at all taxes, the rich, the 1 percent, are not paying a disproportionate share. We have a regressive tax system overall. The personal income tax is the most progressive part of it, but it's not progressive enough to offset the regressivity of the sales tax or the property tax," Parrott added.
Parrott, who said he has supported a state wealth tax for years, noted that Cuomo's argument for not taxing the wealthy hasn't changed over his three terms as governor.
"What he should recognize is that this pandemic is not a typical business cycle downturn. The unevenness of the impact is something we've never seen before. If you designed a form of economic punishment to single out working class and poor people and absolve all responsibility of the rich people, this would be it." Parrott said.
"The governor should be sympathetic to that argument, and he should use that to make the case that the wealthy have an obligation to share in the burden that has been unfairly imposed on minorities and people of color and the poor and the working class."
"all day" - Google News
August 04, 2020 at 04:38AM
https://ift.tt/319CJRS
After Talking "All Day Long" To Rich New Yorkers In The Hamptons, Cuomo Says He Can't Raise Their Taxes - Gothamist
"all day" - Google News
https://ift.tt/35pEz2D
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "After Talking "All Day Long" To Rich New Yorkers In The Hamptons, Cuomo Says He Can't Raise Their Taxes - Gothamist"
Post a Comment