Taxes of the Times, III

The New York Times has a recipe for responding to the financial crisis: raising taxes on New York City homeowners. That's right, with New Yorkers struggling to make mortgage payments and many of them newly out of work, the Times in an editorial yesterday endorsed a $1.5 billion a year increase in property taxes. Quoth the Times: "The City Council in New York should not stand in the way of raising the property tax."

For those of us who are counting, and we are, this marks at least the eighth — count them, eight — tax increase that the Times has plumped for in the past five years. As we pointed out in our December 27, 2007 editorial "Taxes of the Times, II," the paper backs a 1% tax on private health insurance premiums. And as we pointed out in our May 29, 2007, editorial, "Taxes of the Times," the newspaper also backs "a new 4 percent tax on income above $200,000 a year for married couples and above $100,000 for single taxpayers."

That's three. The other five are:

• an increase in the payroll tax of 0.2 percentage points for earners below the $97,500 level and of "3 to 4 percent on wages above the base."

• an increase of $2 a pack in the tax on cigarettes sold in Nassau County.

• a new five-cent a bottle tax on "water, iced tea, sports drinks and juice" sold in New York State.

• restoring the death tax, which is scheduled to expire in 2010, to a 45% level on estates of more than $2 million.

• tax increases on fees charged by hedge funds and private equity mangers.

As we've noted, for the Times and the American left that its editorial positions represent, tax increases aren't the last resort, but the first answer to every problem. So the idea that the solution to the financial crisis lies in a tax increase is par for the course. Plenty of New York City homeowners, who are already shouldering one of the largest state and local tax burdens in the nation, are hoping the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg don't listen to the Times editorial writers. Meanwhile, is it just a coincidence that as New York-based financial institutions seek capital injections, they are increasingly turning to places, such as the United Arab Emirates, that have no income taxes?