Albany, NY – New York Governor David Paterson proposed changes to a payroll tax aimed at assisting the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, saying it would restore about $230 million in revenue this year to the cash-strapped transit agency.
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Paterson, a Democrat, recommended raising a so-called mobility tax on New York City businesses to 0.54 percent from 0.34 percent, while cutting in half the tax on businesses in seven counties outside New York City to 0.17 percent. The proposal would increase the percentage of tax receipts coming from New York City businesses to 88 percent from 70 percent and raise projected revenue to $1.54 billion from $1.31 billion.
“The new proposal I am putting forward will provide relief to straphangers, as the MTA makes the difficult decisions necessary to balance its budget during an historic fiscal crisis,” Paterson said in a news release today. “It also makes key improvements to the current tax structure, promoting regional equity and delivering relief to small businesses.”
Paterson’s proposal comes less than a week after the MTA disclosed in a bond offering statement that it may collect $350 million less this year from the tax, which was adopted by the state Legislature in May as part of a rescue plan for the busiest U.S. transit agency. The state blamed the gap on the recession and compliance problems with the new tax.
What else are they planning to raise?! Aren’t we choked as is?!?!
somebody must stop this man!
another DemocRAT, another tax…
I must have missed the part where the new proposal is helping small businesses. I have a small business and with 15 employees, this tax is taking money out of my pocket to pay for a bloated and mismanaged bureaucracy. I also have no problem with the MTA raising the fair to $3.00.
They can raise it all they want. With unemployment at its highest in years, more people than ever won’t be affected.
Kidding aside, its time to dismantle the MTA and make it accountable. They have wasted billions. Their union needs to be crushed and salaries brought into line with those of the millions that are riding the subway.
Just proving the point that every small tax grows and before you know it, it’ll be $5. It’s like tolls.
All these backdoor (Bloomberg/Style) taxes must stop.
i guess he doesn’t see the problem
great, so no new businesses will open in ny. no new business= no new revenue= no new taxes and so on.
such stupidity its mindblowing
sure…raise taxes help the straphanger.
shoot the employer who will fire the straphanger.
its a win/win….fare stays down and straphanger stays home.
gevaldick
The MTA tax IS a payroll tax!
Turn this MTA into a private business and wew all over sudden it will be profitable!!!
I warned my clients this would happen. They will keep on raising this tax on employeers and the self-employed. It’s still a nuisance tax now but it will eventually be a major pain, like FICA and Medicare and the onerous version for the self-employed called the self-employement tax.
It doesn’y pay to work all my money goes to raxes maybe if i quit I will be elgible for food stamps, section 8, medicaid, wic, and all programs.
I have never seen an agency waisting so much $$$ as the MTA,
Y do they need nice new yukons rolling around?
Y do they have on every intersection 2 mta staff manually marking dll buses driving thru?
Y do they need their own brinks fleet, which requires armord veichels armed guards, cabt they do lik evry1 else and outsource it?
Y do they run so many empty buses n trains off peak hours?
I can go on and on, all this big potato heads who run these agenceis r clueless and live and work in their fancy manhattan office get their with the black limos waiting them, and have no idea how 2 run a business
This tax is intended to strongly hit a small segment of the voting population. It is illogical. The thought is that employers gain by their employees that need the subway. That logic doesn’t apply to self-employed, though. Additionally, this is a form of biting the hand that feeds you, because employers cause tolls to be paid.
p.s. 0.54% is not just a nuisance tax.
It’s an unbelievable chutzpah that this bloated bureaucracy can get away with this. There is no justifiable logic to charge a self-employed business owner (or any other business for that matter) an MTA tax. Set the fare to whatever it’s supposed to be ($3, $5, $2, whatever), stop charging the price of a dinner just for the privilege of driving into and out of Manhattan (to help further that bloat and to subsidize the subway/bus fares), and open those books so that people can see where their tax dollars are going.
It’s getting to the point where any business owner, even an unincorporated one, is better off moving to/incorporating his business in Delaware or some other location (to avoid these onerous and unnecessary taxes that don’t even go to the State, itself). Is that what NYS and the MTA want? This is so absurd!
Booooo Boooo Booooo 30% is not enough?