Letters to the Editor
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‘The Cuomo Tax’
I find your series on the Cuomo tax prescient, because I could certainly see a huge tax on real estate transfers coming back. In fact, I would favor it myself [“The Cuomo Tax,” Editorial, June 23, 2006].
The past 12 years in New York have seen, in effect, a bipartisan generational war launched by those cashing in and moving out against those who hope to have a future here. For the Republicans, the weapon of choice has been a massive increase in state and local debts (and more recently federal debts as well), and inadequate contributions to public employee pension funds during thedot.comera.
For Democrats, it has been the enhancement of public employee pension benefits to please public employee unions, even as the private-sector workers that they buy goods and services from no longer have such pensions, or even any retirement plan at all.
Perhaps the most telling demand of the Transport Workers Union during its strike was for a retiree health insurance benefit that could be used out of state, where its members hope to go after re-creating the 1970s here.
The damage increases year after year, as in all but boom years a choice is presented between diminished public services/benefits and higher taxes. Meanwhile, those who move their business or themselves away pay nothing.
I’d like to see state income taxes, local property taxes, and transit fares reduced to what they would be if our debts were at the national average as a share of income, and if no public employee received retirement benefits (pension or retiree health insurance) before age 62. That would leave the base taxes paid equal to the services and benefits actually received.
An “excess debt” surcharge and “early retirement” surcharge would then be added on top of those taxes and fares, where everyone could see it, as required to cover the rest of the debt service and pension hole.
To keep the surcharge low, I’d like to see the exclusion of pension income from New York State taxable income ended. Today’s pensioners aren’t worse off than those coming after, as in the past, they’re better off. And I’d like to see an “exit tax,” with a big increase in the real estate transfer tax paid by sellers – unless they offset the sale with the purchase of a similarly valued property elsewhere in the state. Sales volume would then dry up? Fine. That would keep the residential and commercial property owners here, and paying the “excess debt” and “early retirement” surcharges off, rather than leaving that burden to those of use who stay.
LAWRENCE LITTLEFIELD
Brooklyn
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