Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) is now falsely blaming both President Trump and Florida for his own state’s $2.3 billion budget shortfall.
If you recall, less than ten days ago, Cuomo attempted to blame Trump’s tax cut for New York’s failure to collect the revenue necessary to cover this year’s budget.
“It literally restructured the economy to help red states at the cost of blue states,” Cuomo whined of the tax reform that has soared the national economy.
“He says it’s prompting many of the state’s richest residents — who pay 46 percent of the state’s income tax — to either change their primary residence or leave New York entirely,” he added, according to local media.
At the time, I debunked Cuomo’s claim. You can read the details here. Warning: there is some math involved.
Bottom line: Trump’s tax reform put an end to the immoral practice of allowing high-tax states like New York to force the rest of the country to underwrite their bad policies. Before last year’s tax reform was passed, up to any dollar amount, you could write your state taxes off of your federal taxes. As of this year, though, the state tax write-off amount is capped at $10,000, which means the wealthy are now feeling the full bite of blue state tax policies, and they don’t like it.
This week, CBS Miami reported that Cuomo “blamed budget shortfalls on the state of Florida. … He said New Yorkers are fleeing to the sunshine state to save big time on taxes.”
CBS Miami talked to Barry Horowitz, “a CPA and estate planner [who] says last year was one of his busiest” because wealthy New Yorkers are desperate to get out from under that state’s crushing tax burden:
“I have done a lot of planning over the years. You know I would have maybe 10 people call me a year. Last year I was averaging 2-3 people a week calling me to see how they can move out and what we can do,” he said.
The big change in the tax reform was the long-standing deductions have disappeared. For a person who makes a million dollars a year, they are now paying $40,000 more come tax time. For the person who makes $10 million, it’s costing them $400,000 a year.
“People are just saying they want to get out of here in droves because the dollars involved that we are losing, tax-wise, is not worth it to stay,” Horowitz said.
Is this all Cuomo can do? Whine about Trump? Whine about the Trump tax cut? Whine about a state that has much lower taxes than New York? Blame, blame, blame…
Note what Cuomo is not talking about: fixing the problem, which would require lowering his state’s taxes, most especially New York’s obnoxiously high 8.82 percent income tax rate, one of the most punitive in the country. For the record, Florida’s state income tax is exactly ZERO.
In just one month, Cuomo’s favorable rating in New York has plummeted from 51 percent to just 43 percent while his unfavorable rating jumped from 43 percent to 50 percent. That is a 15-point shift in the wrong direction in 30 short days.
No doubt, Cuomo’s monstrous abortion law had something to do with that, but now that New Yorkers actually have to live with the policies passed by the Democrats they elect, now that those policies cannot be passed off to the rest of the country in the form of an immoral federal write-off that forces the working class to subsidize the wealthy, they’re moving to red states like Florida.
Let’s just hope they don’t take their terrible voting habits with them.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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