One cheer to Rep. Anthony Weiner, the Democrat running for mayor of New York, for his plan to cut local personal income taxes by $127 million. Mr. Weiner is onto something when he says, as he told our Meghan Clyne, “taxes in Bloomberg’s New York are too high.” We couldn’t agree more. And Mr. Weiner has fine timing, too, making his point on taxes just as millions of New Yorkers are scrambling to file their 2004 tax returns by tomorrow’s deadline.

We part ways with Mr. Weiner on his plan for distributing the tax cut. He wants to give New Yorkers with joint household incomes under $300,000, and individuals with incomes under $150,000, a 10% reduction in their local income tax. But he wants to raise taxes on households making more than $1 million a year. This is an echo of the plan Senator Kerry ran on in 2004, promising to pay for middle-class tax cuts by raising taxes on the rich. President Bush effectively attacked Mr. Kerry by arguing that a politician who runs promising to raise taxes is likely to keep that part of the promise. And Mr. Bush got elected initially in part by arguing back in 2000 that a tax cut should go to everyone who pays taxes, not just a preferred few.

Mayor Bloomberg is likely to be less successful portraying Mr. Weiner as a tax raiser than Mr. Bush was in portraying Mr. Kerry as one. That is because while Mr. Bush cut taxes, Mr. Bloomberg has raised levies on income, sales, and property. (He has since regained some credibility by offering a property tax rebate.) Mr. Weiner, however, is also a flawed messenger, because as a congressman, he’s been voting against Mr. Bush’s tax cuts.

Local taxes are slightly different than national taxes, too, because while it’s somewhat difficult, though not impossible, to leave America for an offshore tax haven, it’s pretty easy for a high-income taxpayer to decamp from Manhattan to places with lower income taxes such as Saddle River, N.J., or Greenwich, Conn., or even Westchester County. Raise taxes on the rich, and they may flee the city. Better to cut taxes on all taxpayers and let everyone share the benefits of the economic growth that results from increased private-sector investment and spending.

It’s an encouraging development in the city’s mayoral campaign to see the debate turning to tax cuts. Now that Mr. Weiner has offered a detailed plan, we look forward to seeing tax-cutting plans from the other mayoral candidates, including Mr. Bloomberg, Steve Shaw, and Thos. Ognibene among the Republicans and Gifford Miller, C. Virginia Fields, and Fernando Ferrer among the Democrats. The way to win our vote in this election is going to be to offer the most growth-oriented tax cutting plan, the one that distributes the tax cuts fairly to the people who pay the most taxes, and that is carried by a candidate who is credible on the topic.