Mayor Bloomberg declined yesterday to provide a “no new taxes” pledge, during a speech to business leaders. During a question-and-answer session after his remarks at a Crain’s New York breakfast, Mr. Bloomberg was asked if he thought taxes in the city were too high and whether he would commit “right here and now” to not raising taxes if he wins a second term.

“Nobody can truthfully predict what will go on in the future,” Mr. Bloomberg said, ducking an unequivocal pledge. “My objective would be to bring them down, but when you say ‘Taxes are too high’ you’re talking about a number out of context. … If you think taxes are too high, I would argue you’re probably a little bit out-of-step with businesses that are coming here.”

The mayor’s answer is a far cry from his January 2002 inaugural address, in which he vowed not to raise taxes. The city “cannot repeat the mistakes of the past,” Mr. Bloomberg said three years ago. “We cannot raise taxes,” he said. “We will find another way.”

In the intervening years, that other way has eluded Mr. Bloomberg. New Yorkers have faced increases in property taxes, income taxes, sales taxes, and tobacco taxes.

“The first year we couldn’t raise taxes because there was a great fear as to what people would do” after the September 11 attacks, Mr. Bloomberg explained yesterday.

“So I used the other path of a borrowing authority,” he continued. “That helped us get through the first year. In the second year I thought it was not prudent to go and borrow again.”

So Mr. Bloomberg raised taxes instead.

Many of the mayor’s critics have said for some time that with the terror attacks behind him, Mr. Bloomberg must do an about-face and lower taxes if the city is going to remain competitive and stop hopping from one yearly budget crisis to another. In particular they are concerned about what they portray as the mayor’s myopia about the city: that he thinks businesses will pay any price just to be here.

“Bloomberg’s problem is that he continues to draw solely on his own experience,” a Manhattan Institute budget analyst, E.J. McMahon, said. “He thinks he never would have gotten rich anywhere else and he doesn’t want to be anywhere else – and if you want to be anywhere else you are crazy. That isn’t true for everyone.”

New Yorkers are among the country’s highest-taxed people. Not only does the city impose common municipal taxes, it also imposes levies that are normally the prerogatives of the federal and state governments, such as personal income taxes, sales taxes, corporate income taxes, and unincorporated business taxes.

Six months into his first term, Mr. Bloomberg signed into law an 18-fold increase in the city’s cigarette tax. The move created a black market in cigarettes.

Faced with budget gaps in fiscal 2003 and fiscal 2004, Mr. Bloomberg then won a hike in the property tax of 18.5%. Though it was less than the 25% hike he originally proposed, it was the largest tax increase in the city’s history.

New Yorkers were also socked with an income-tax increase and a quarter point jump in the sales tax. Now income above $500,000 is taxed at 4.45% and income starting at $100,000 is taxed at 4.25%.The top rate previously was 3.65%.

Add the state income-tax rate to the city’s new totals and New Yorkers with taxable incomes over $500,000 are paying 12.15% in state and city income taxes, according to Mr. McMahon, the budget analyst. Single taxpayers making $100,000 and married couples making $150,000 are paying 11.75%, and the sales tax now is 8.625%.

That pattern, analysts said, has put the brakes on New York City growth.

A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, which looked at state and local taxes and state income growth from 1960 to 1992, found that high marginal tax rates and high overall tax levels had a negative correlation with economic growth.

A 1991 study by the New York City comptroller’s office found high tax rates had hobbled the city. “The rapid increase in the tax burden, which began in the 1960s and continued through the mid-1970s, was a factor that contributed to the economic downturn that led to the city’s famous fiscal crisis of 1975-78,” it concluded.

“Bloomberg talks as if New York City is immune to the laws of supply and demand,” Mr. McMahon said. “If he really thinks that is the case, why are we sweating anything? Why is he cutting the budget? He should double taxes.”

At the Crain’s event in downtown Manhattan yesterday, the mayor focused on what he called “measurable results” of the city’s economic resurgence. Nearly 40 million people visited the city in 2004, a new record. Hotel occupancy rates were climbing and room rates were rising. After a long post-September 11 decline, the number of overseas visitors to the city rebounded, he said.

“I don’t like taxes any more than you do,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “I think history has shown that we did adopt the most prudent course.”