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.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
