Here we go again: Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers are secretly moving to ratchet up taxes once more, hitting large companies in and around the city via the “payroll mobility tax.”
The goal: to raise $2 billion for the MTA money pit as part of this year’s budget.
Yet much of the tax will come from the pockets of average New Yorkers, with companies — those that don’t flee, anyway — raising prices and holding down workers’ wages to cover the new costs.
Haven’t heard about this? That’s by design: Lawmakers are hashing out the deal with the gov behind closed doors and refuse to discuss it publicly.
That way Albany can impose the tax as a fait accompli and avoid a public backlash that could block it.
After all, Hochul & Co. surely know voters are sick of being squeezed, time and again, to bail out the MTA.
Remember: This $2 billion tax hike would be on top of the $1 billion or so a year the gov hopes congestion-pricing tolls bring in for the agency.
The excuse: the need to plug a $33 billion hole in the MTA’s $68 billion capital budget.
Yet Albany already raised the “mobility tax” just two years ago, fares are rising again in August and the MTA got $15 billion extra from the feds during COVID.
Recall, too, that Albany created the mobility tax in 2009 to (supposedly) put the agency on a firm fiscal footing. Ha!
And don’t expect any new tax or other revenue stream to be a lasting fix.
Because the MTA, with its $20 billion budget, isn’t short of cash; it simply spends too much.
When will enough be enough?
If only Hochul & Co. would exert the same kind of energy on holding down MTA costs as on plotting secret new tax hikes.
They can take on labor and insist on work-rule changes to save a bundle. Get better (cheaper) construction contracts and improve management.
They can prioritize the current system, rather than look to fund overpriced upgrades — like the 1.8-mile Second Avenue Subway extension that, at $7.7 billion, will be the most expensive per-mile subway build-out in history.
Meanwhile, New Yorkers should just say no to this umpteenth stealth tax hike.
Before lawmakers ram it through with no one looking.
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