Tax and spend is coming to an end.
Via Daily Mail:
Governor Andrew Cuomo on Monday raised the alarm about New York’s $2.3billion budget deficit, which he largely blamed on federal tax reforms signed into law by President Donald Trump last year.
Cuomo said at a state Capitol news conference that the year-old federal law capping a deduction for state and local taxes — known as SALT — at $10,000 is the culprit for the significant shortfall in state income tax revenue.
‘We’ve set up reserves, but this is worse than we had anticipated,’ Cuomo said after referring to the fiscal situation as being ‘as serious as a heart attack.’
Cuomo, joined by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Robert Mujica, the governor’s budget director, said he will be making adjustments in the $175billion state budget proposal he unveiled last week.
The Democratic governor didn’t provide specifics, although he mentioned the state’s top funding priorities — education, health care, infrastructure and a middle class tax reduction — as areas that could be impacted by budget cuts.
The governor has until mid-February to make budget amendments.
Democrats in Albany had warned that the GOP federal tax law reforms signed into law in late 2017 by Trump would hurt predominantly blue states with high income and property taxes, such as New York, where the average SALT deduction tops $22,000.
Cuomo slammed SALT as ‘an economic civil war,’ arguing that under the provision, the one-percenters can no longer deduct their full state and local taxes on their federal tax returns, reported Newsday.
The situation encourages high-income New Yorkers to move out of the state – and take their tax revenues with them.
‘It literally restructured the economy to help red states at the cost of blue states,’ Cuomo said. ‘That’s exactly what it did. It was a diabolical, political maneuver.’
Republicans, now in the minority in the state Senate as well as the Assembly, said New York’s high taxes were already prompting people to move to other states before the federal tax reforms kicked in.