The City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, in her first State of the City speech today, will propose creating a $300 tax credit that about 1.1 million renters in New York City could collect as early as 2008.

The proposed credit would be available to tenants based on their income. A single person earning $43,000 a year or less, for example, would be eligible for the credit, as would a married couple with two children earning up to $75,000 a year. To receive the benefit, tenants would need to file personal income taxes with the city or state. Renters who do not owe taxes also would have to file their income taxes to get access to the credit.

“Over two-thirds of our residents rent their homes, and for too long they’ve been forgotten and ignored when it comes to tax relief,” Ms. Quinn will say today, according to an advance copy of a portion of her speech. “They’ve not benefited from the rebates or tax breaks owning a home can bring.”

The proposal, estimated to cost the city $261 million, has been shared with Mayor Bloomberg’s office and must be approved in Albany before it can be launched. Ms. Quinn’s spokeswoman, Maria Alvarado, said the tax credit plan would be presented in the state capital fairly soon.

A spokesman for Mayor Bloomberg, Stuart Loeser, said the administration hasn’t seen the details of the proposal, but added that if it’s a budget proposal it will be discussed as part of the budget process.

The city offers some New York homeowners a $400 property tax rebate; in 2006, more than 600,000 residents collected rebate checks. Ms. Quinn will argue in her speech today that renters also deserve a tax break because they have shouldered the burden of the city’s property tax hikes in the form of rent increases.

“The median rent has increased more than 30% since 1999 and higher property taxes are part of the reason,” Ms. Quinn will say during her noon speech in the council chambers at City Hall. “In a year with a larger than anticipated surplus, it’s finally time, time for the city’s renters to receive some overdue help.”

A deputy research director of the Citizens Budget Commission, Elizabeth Lynam, said it is a good idea to give New York renters some financial respite, as they have been left out of tax relief packages for property owners. But she said restructuring the city’s property tax system so it does not place such a high burden on owners of commercial and rental properties would likely lead to a reduction in rent costs and provide wider cost savings for renters, regardless of their income level.

“That is less direct, but has the advantage of reaching a broader group,” she said. “If you just did it in the form of lower taxes, then landlords would pass along” the savings to their tenants.

A senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Nicole Gelinas, said the purpose of Ms. Quinn’s proposal is unclear, as it wouldn’t reduce housing costs or cut taxes. She said renters don’t need a tax cut because they don’t pay a specific rental tax, and she said that if the goal of the proposal is to lower rents in the city, a plan to alter New York’s property taxes is a better way to reach that end.

New York residents pay less than $300 in city income taxes if they earn less than $18,000 to $25,000 each year, depending on the number of children in the family and a parent’s marital status, Ms. Gelinas wrote in an e-mail message. Some renters eligible for the proposed tax credit don’t pay income taxes.

New York residents who earn less than $30,000 pay 3.5% of the city’s income taxes, although they make up about 40% of the taxpayers.
“It is not an efficient tax cut to simply give everyone $300, because some people pay much more than $300 in taxes, while others pay much less,” she wrote.

The treasurer of the Tenants Political Action Committee, an organization that works to elect pro-tenant candidates to office in New York state, Michael McKee, said he supports Ms. Quinn’s proposal and that it’s time renters landed a break.

“It is only fair that if homeowners should get a tax rebate, tenants should get it too,” he said. “For a lot of people, it’s like the $400 check homeowners get. It’s a token. But it will help a lot of people. The lower your income, the more it will help.”