Mayor Bloomberg and the state’s Legislature are preparing to send New York City back to the high-tax early 1990s — the Dinkins Era. If all goes as expected, the last of the governor’s vetoes, that of the so-called New York City bailout package, will come today. The “bailout” here amounts to nothing more than a permission slip from Albany for the city to raise taxes on its own wealthiest residents by means of a surcharge. Or to put it another way, authorization to mortgage the Big Apple even further to the rich.

According to the mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, the top quarter of tax payers already pay quite a bit more than three quarters of the city’s income tax. After the top income tax rates in the city are increased to 4.25% from 3.648% for residents with income of more than $100,000, and to 4.45% from 3.648% for residents with income of more than $500,000, that distribution will become only more skewed.

The increase in the city’s income tax rate, combined with the increase in the state’s income tax rate, will amount to a 16% income tax hike on wealthy New York City residents — if $100,000 is indeed “wealthy,” as opposed to middle class, in the city. It’s a precarious situation when city residents are already smarting from the mayor’s 18.5% property tax increase, a $1.42 a pack cigarette tax increase, and a sales tax increase of 4.5%. New York City, after all, is one of only a handful of cities that even has a municipal personal income tax — towns such as Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, and Indianapolis share the distinction — and got along fine without one, until the Lindsay years.

Since Mayor Lindsay instituted the tax in 1966, at 2%, the trend has been generally upward. For those who take comfort in claims that the current sur charges will “sunset” in three years, it might be wise to take a look at the recent history. The OMB’s “Tax Revenue Forecasting Documentation” is available on the Web. The most recent bout of surcharge-mania occurred in the Dinkins administration. In 1990, there was a surcharge implemented bringing the top income tax rate in the city to 3.91% from 3.4%. Initially slated to run only from 1990 to 1992, it was extended to 1996 by the “Safe Streets, Safe City” program, and didn’t expire, ultimately, until 1998. An income tax surcharge from 1991, at a rate of 14%, persists to this day. Let the OMB tell it: “Low income taxpayers were not exempt from the additional tax. [It] has since been extended four times, in 1993, 1995, 1997 and 1999.” It is currently set to expire on December 31 of this year — don’t hold your breath.

And thus do we return to a city income tax rate only one-hundredth of a percentage point shy of the Dinkins rate: Mr. Bloomberg’s 4.45%, as opposed to Mr. Dinkins’s 4.46%. At the same time, the state has erased its own tax progress made during the 1990s. The state’s top income tax rate had dropped to 6.85% in 2002 from 7.88% in 1991. Now it will shoot to 7.7%. The state is also mortgaged to the rich: According to the state’s Office of Tax Policy Analysis, in 1999 the top 3.4% of taxpayers bore 44.4% of the state’s tax liability.

Take all of this plus the fact that a quirk in New York’s tax law is going to up the take on the estates of the wealthy in coming years, and the incentives grow for an exodus. Since spending hasn’t been contained, that can only lead to more deficits down the line, and more tax increases. It took the state until 1996 to wise up to the policy errors of the early 1990s and make some significant rate reductions. It took the city until 1998. The saying that history repeats itself is being underscored.