Showing posts with label GOV PLOTS SECRET TAX HIKE ON RICH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GOV PLOTS SECRET TAX HIKE ON RICH. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Expect more New Yorkers in Broward, as NY Post reveals: GOV PLOTS SECRET TAX HIKE ON RICH

I've highlighted below in blue the aspects of the article that I thought
you'd find of particular interest!

It's as if Gov. David Patterson never learned the lesson of why so many
people left New York State in the first place in the early '70's, which was
responsible for so many tens of thousands of New Yorkers flocking to
South Florida, and sometimes it seemed, all into North Miami Beach
on NE 163rd Street, with their orange license plates with blue numbers
and letters.

And their kids became my classmates at Fulford Elementary and J.F.K.
Junior High, yet they still acted like the Mets, Jets and Knicks winning
their respective championship was, somehow, the natural order of things,
and that the Dolphins success under Don Shula was a fluke.
That was SO grating and irritating!

Obviously, demographics being what they were then, I knew lots of
ex-New Yorkers in North Miami Beach in 1972 when I was eleven
-and first got Dolphin season tickets- who were still convinced that Joe
Namath would, single-handedly, defeat the Dolphins and prevent an
undefeated season. Nope!
Meanwhile, forty years later, the Jets still haven't returned to the Super Bowl.
------------------------------------------
New York Post

Fredric U. Dicker
EXCLUSIVE
March 23, 2009

GOV. PATERSON and legislative Democrats have secretly agreed on an $8 billion, two- year tax hike on individuals making more than $500,000 a year that will "sunset" around the time he plans to run for election in 2010, legislative sources told The Post.

Also under intense discussion yesterday as lawmakers rushed to complete a budget by April 1 is a proposal to raise the state's 4 percent sales tax to 4.5 percent the total of which would jump to close to 10 percent in parts of the state with the addition of local sales taxes.

PLUS: Paterson Takes Huge Hit in Poll

The sales-tax hike, too, would sunset at the end of next year or in early 2011, legislative Democrats said.

While Paterson has repeatedly claimed he was against a "millionaires' tax" on the very wealthy and hasn't backed a sales-tax hike, the sources said he was privately backing both.

The current top tax rate is 6.85 percent for all incomes over $25,000 a year. Sources could not say yesterday what the rate would rise to for incomes over $500,000.

"Paterson has told everyone he really wants the taxes, but he wants it to appear to the public that he's against them," a senior legislative official said.

"Then, next year, when he's running, he'll say we can afford to phase them out so he can claim that he's a tax cutter."

Billions in other tax hikes proposed by Paterson in December, including huge increases in levies on insurance policies and health services, have been left in the budget for the fiscal year beginning April 1.

The budget, which is meant to close a multibillion-dollar deficit made less severe by billions of dollars in last-minute federal stimulus aid, is also expected to cut several major state programs, including Medicaid, deeper than many have expected.

The proposed cuts have angered many Democratic lawmakers, as well as the powerful unions that regularly bankroll their campaigns.

Democrats who control the Legislature and the governor's office for the first time since the late 1930s plan to ram the budget through with virtually no debate or scrutiny using special "messages of necessity" issued by Paterson that will circumvent the legally required three-day waiting period designed to give lawmakers, and the public, time to review proposed new laws, several sources said.

As lieutenant governor and Senate minority leader, Paterson strongly opposed using the "messages" to cut off debate.

A Paterson spokesman yesterday refused to say whether the governor would use the procedure to ram through the budget.

The budget plan, meanwhile, is expected to shift longstanding state commitments from wealthy, Republican-oriented Long Island school districts to poorer districts in New York City and upstate, potentially angering suburban Senate Democrats whose votes will be vital for the budget to pass.

fredric.dicker@nypost.com

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