Millionaires in New York demand taxes

Albany, New York.- A millionaire enters the building of the New York legislature and says, "Please, add taxes!"

Although this is apparently not a joke: this millionaire is Morris Pearl, former leader of BlackRock and current president of Patriotic Millionaires, a group dedicated to promoting an increase in corporate taxation and billionaires.

At the budget hearing held yesterday in the Legislative Assembly of

New York

In the city of Albany (state capital), Pearl asked a group of half a dozen lawmakers, Democrats and Republicans, to create a new "billionaire tax" applicable to households over $ 5 million. annual income, to finance with this money the construction of accessible housing, infrastructure and schools.

"I am a resource person and I could live where I wanted to," said Pearl. "If I wanted to live in a state with low taxes and bad public services, I would move to Kansas, but that's not what I want."

Among the more than 200 members of Patriotic Millionaires, 41 live in the state of New York, famous for its wealth and high taxes. The group's message comes at a crucial moment:
Democrats control the legislature and hold the governorship for the first time in a decade. The most progressive wing of the party is gaining momentum. on a national level.

Several Democratic representatives of the state legislature, as well as chairman of the city council Corey Johnson, have expressed their support for a tax on expensive second homes of the wealthiest, after the billionaire owner of a fund. investment. will pay $ 238 million for a
penthouse in Central Park. Senator Julia Salazar of Brooklyn was elected in November as the first Socialist Democratic legislator to sit in the state legislature.

At the national level, the representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently popularized the idea of ​​applying a 70% tax on annual revenues over $ 10 million. And Senator Elizabeth Warren of Mbadachusetts will vie for the presidency of the United States with the promise of fighting income inequality, while Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Senator and Social Democrat confessed, is also considering running for office.

However, lawmakers reject any proposals to increase taxes on billionaires. Especially New York governor Andrew M. Cuomo, who last week voted to reject the idea of ​​an enlarged millionaires tax, while his state budget has a projected deficit of 2,000 million dollars. dollars. dollars.

The top 1% of New Yorkers account for about 31% of New York state revenues, according to data from the Economic Policy Institute, a New York-based expert group.

Washington

. According to Cuomo, this 1% also accounts for half of the income tax in that state.

"There comes a time when these people, just like they like to live in New York, prefer to settle in Florida rather than paying $ 300,000 in taxes," Cuomo said in an interview. "Everyone wants to raise the taxes of the rich, and I am proud to have a progressive tax system, but we must take into account the enormous fragility of the current economic situation," he added. .

New York Senate Democratic Caucus Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins ​​of Westchester also dismissed the idea of ​​new taxes.

Of course, progressive activists have argued for years that rising taxes on the rich do not affect the state's economy. But the hope of the Patriotic Millionaires and the grbadroots groups that support them is that their message has more weight, precisely, to come from the rich.

"New York will always be New York, a unique place, and that's why all millionaires are concentrated there," says Disney's Abigail, granddaughter of Walt Disney and a member of Patriotic Millionaires.

New York's high income tax currently being introduced in 2009 as a Millionaire Tax, but it affects anyone earning more than $ 300,000 a year.

Between that date and 2016, the number of millionaires filing returns in New York has increased by 72% and, over the same period, the total annual income of these millionaires has increased by 54%, according to the Institute. for Fiscal Policy. , a group of nonpartisan experts. During the same period, the income of those who are not millionaires has increased by 33%.

"The taxes we are proposing will not affect the quality of life of the rich," said Abigail Disney, who lives in Manhattan and did not attend the hearing in Albany, but who has been actively campaigning for years to become a patriotic millionaire. "They will not have to sell their private planes or their yachts."

The New York Times