New York City – A typical New Yorker pays more than $85 each month in taxes tacked onto bills for living expenses like gas, electricity, phone, cable TV and transportation, The Post found.
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Taxing big businesses and utilities — which pass the cost on to millions of customers — is a stealthy way for the feds, state, city and the increasingly desperate MTA to fill their coffers, experts say.
“They’ve turned these private businesses into collection agencies for the state,” said Louis Manuta, senior attorney for the Public Utility Law Project, an Albany-based group that advocates for low-income consumers.
Taxes add as much as 37 percent to a telephone bill, Manuta calculates.
“People are afraid to lose their electric, gas and phone service, so it’s much more likely the government will collect fees placed on these bills,” Manuta said.
Taxes and surcharges make up 27 percent of every Con Edison electric bill, and 27.9 percent of cooking-gas tabs, the company said.
National Grid, which supplies gas to Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and Long Island, said taxes take 19 percent of residential bills in the city and 15 percent in Long Island.
The MTA bailout plan that hiked subway, bus and cab fares last May also imposed a new tax of 34 cents for every $100 of payroll on all employers in NYC and seven surrounding counties.
But giant utilities like Con Ed and some municipalities have added surcharges on bills to recoup the cost from its customers or residents. The MTA added about 1 percent in taxes to a Con Ed bill, a spokesman said.
“The MTA payroll tax bill is the tax that keeps on taking,” said Bill Schoolman, president of Hampton Luxury Liner and Classic Coach in Long Island.
Schoolman, whose bus companies are socked with the payroll tax, also lives in Suffolk County, which tucked a $7.31 charge for the MTA payroll tax into his personal property tax.
He filed a lawsuit in Suffolk Supreme Court charging that the tax is illegal and unfair — in part because the MTA already gets money from several other hidden taxes.
They include three of 11 levies that can add 33 percent to the cost of New Yorkers’ cellphones — an MTA surcharge, sales tax and excise tax.
The three MTA taxes total 0.98 percent. Snuck into the fine print, “no one is going to notice,” said Scott Mackey, an economist who tracks taxes for cellphone companies.
“These nickel-and-dime taxes by themselves are small enough that most people don’t complain. But when you add them all up, they bite taxpayers hard, especially low-income people struggling in the down economy,” Mackey said.
Taxes and fees tacked onto utility and other bills dramatically hike the cost of living in the Big Apple. Here’s a sampling of levies and surcharges that hit a typical New Yorker in a month:
ELECTRICITY
Con Edison typical monthly charge: $59.11
* Property taxes: $12.78
* Sales tax: $5.02
* Income tax: 19 cents
* Gross receipts tax: $3.60
* Other business taxes: 3 cents
* Sales and use tax on company purchases: 2 cents
* MTA payroll tax: 22 cents
Total taxes added: $21.86
COOKING GAS
Con Edison typical monthly charge: $28.37
* Property tax, federal, other taxes: $7.58
* State surcharge: $1.26
* Gross revenue taxes $1.20
* Sales tax on supply and delivery: $1.18
* Other: 82 cents
Total taxes added: $12.04
HOME PHONE
Typical local and long-distance, with features: $50
* FCC subscriber line charge: $6.50
* FCC universal service surcharge: $3.75
* Federal excise tax: 90 cents
* 911 surcharge: $1
* State and local sales tax: $2.55
* Miscellaneous surcharges: $2.26
* MTA metropolitan commuter transportation district tax: 21 cents
* Gross receipts tax surcharge: $1.66
Total taxes added: $18.83
CELLPHONE
Typical single-user monthly service, with texting: $69.99
* Federal universal service fee: $3.66
* State sales taxes: $2.80
* City sales tax: $3.15
* MTA sales tax: 17 cents
* State excise tax: $1.75
* MTA excise tax: 42 cents
* City utility gross receipts tax: $1.38
* State 911 surcharge: $1.20
* City 911 surcharge: 30 cents
* MTA surcharge: 9 cents
* State franchise tax: 26 cents
Total taxes added: $15.18
CABLE TV
Typical Time Warner monthly cable service, with HBO: $72.90
* Franchise fee: $3.99
* FCC regulatory fee: 7 cents
* Public access fee: 60 cents
Total taxes added: $4.66
CAB
10 NYC rides per month
* MTA surcharge: 50 cents each for 10 rides: $5
* Weeknight cabby surcharge: 50 cents each for five rides: $2.50
* Weekday peak-hour cabby surcharge: $1 each for five rides: $5
Total taxes added: $12.50
Just keep electing democRATS this what you get
An additional annoyance is that (for those who itemize on their tax returns) you can’t claim any federal tax benefits from these secondary charges.
If you pay (for example) NYC and NYS taxes of (made up number) $1,500,
you can get a partial offset by listing them on your 1040. But if you’re paying Con Ed and Brooklyn Union and the Cable Companies an additional $500/yr, you can’t get any crediting.
Who will be the first moron to write and ask would you rather have these taxes or have cuts to the services?
Cut the waste and fraud is the answer.
The burden of taxes id carried by the poorer people , the wealthy get away with low taxes After all they tell us that its a trickel down method to help the poor . Give the rich more tax breaks and it will help the poor/
I think its time to close the MTA or sell it.
They raised the fare per ride, the state keeps on adding new taxes for the MTA and they still are reporting loses every month. Any company that would run like the MTA would’ve filed for chapter 11 already the difference is that the MTA keeps on asking the state for money to survive and the State like idiots keeps on adding taxes to cover the loses.
AG Commo, its time for some investigation into the MTA or shut it down.
hey! what about tax on gasoline …