The New York State Legislature has come up with a budget. Faced with a more than $16 billion dollar budget deficit the lawmakers were forced to make some difficult choices and unfortunately most of them were wrong. Starting with a tax surcharge on the “wealthy”, those making more than $300,000. That group will now pay 7.85% of their salary in state taxes, a 1% increase, those making $500,00 will see a more than 2% increase which will raise their state tax rate to almost 9%. Theoretically the surcharge would expire in three years, assuming the economy recovers. I have a couple of problems with the plan: while $300,000 is a great salary, those in that category would not consider themselves wealthy, especially if they have to live in New York City. Secondly, when times are this tough, the pain should be spread around, but it was not. In fact, spending has increased because Albany used federal stimulus money to avert any reduction in aid to schools and municipalities.
Another bad move is the expansion of the nickel deposit fees on soda bottles to also cover water bottles, but let’s me honest about this. It is not a deposit to encourage recycling; it’s a tax pure and simple.
And once again these extremely important decisions were made in secret between the legislative leaders all members of the same party meeting over the weekend and they will be enacted within a matter of hours after the public learns the details.
It's Albany at its worst.
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