[ April 27, 2024 ]
Highest taxes in the nation. Folks are voting with their feet.
By contrast, tax revenue in Florida is wildly exceeding forecasts. NY state tax collections, on the other hand, are running 32.2% lower than a year ago, with personal income tax revenue lagging 45%.
By contrast, tax revenue in Florida is wildly exceeding forecasts.
Story continues below advertisement
The Blue State Budget Blues
The fiscal crash arrives following years of profligate spending.
By The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, June 20, 2023.
[…]New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said Friday that state tax collections in the past two months are running 32.2% lower than a year ago, with personal income tax revenue lagging 45%. His report follows Gov. Kathy Hochul’s revised budget forecast this month projecting a $36.4 billion shortfall over the next three years.
While income-tax withholding is still increasing as payrolls grow, capital gains have fallen. Democrats in Albany exacerbated the state’s fiscal reliance on the rich in 2021 when they raised the combined state and New York City top rate to 14.8% from 12.7%. Millionaires now pay as much state income tax as the bottom 98.9% of tax filers.
Cities may also soon feel budget pain since year-over-year growth in local sales tax collections has run below 2% in each of the last three months, Mr. DiNapoli warns. That’s well below the rate of inflation. No doubt one contributing factor is New York’s loss of some 525,000 in population between 2020 and 2022.
Yet Democrats in Albany this spring boosted spending by $9 billion in their $229 billion budget. New York City Mayor Eric Adams last week reached generous five-year labor agreements with 11 government unions. Teacher pay will increase by about 20%, raising the top salary to $151,271.
Next door in New Jersey, officials reported Monday that tax revenue last month declined 20% from the previous May, driven by a 55% plunge in income-tax, and 44% drop in corporate-tax, collections. Income-tax revenue in the current fiscal year that began last July is running 9.2% lower than in the previous year while corporate-tax revenue is down 5.7%. For the first time in nearly three years, sales tax revenue in May also dropped.
Recall that Democrats in Trenton raised income taxes and extended a 2.5 percentage point corporate surtax in autumn 2020. New Jersey’s 11.5% top corporate tax rate is now the highest in the country. Gov. Phil Murphy has said he wants the surtax to expire this year, but don’t count on it.
Time and again, progressives use putative budget emergencies to impose supposedly temporary tax increases that invariably become permanent as the revenue is baked into spending baselines. This is what happened in California in 2012 when Democrats raised the top rate to 13.3%.
California’s budget has since become even more dependent on the affluent. The top 0.5% of taxpayers pay 40% of state income tax, and their capital gains have plunged. Income-tax collections in the fiscal year that started last July are 34.6% below a year earlier and corporate-tax revenue is down 33.7%. Gov. Gavin Newsom last month increased the state’s projected budget deficit to $32 billion, but revenue is already trailing his revised forecast.
By contrast, tax revenue in Florida is exceeding forecasts. Florida’s corporate-tax revenue—at a 5.5% rate—during the first 10 months of this fiscal year is up 57.7% year-over-year. States tax corporate income based on the share of business done in their borders. So while corporate earnings generally are shrinking, Florida appears to be grabbing a larger share of profits as businesses expand in the state. The opposite may be happening in California, New York and New Jersey.
Florida’s $117 billion budget this year is half as large as New York’s, though it has 2.5 million more people. The Sunshine State lacks an income tax and mandatory government collective-bargaining, which together create a tax-and-spend ratchet. An iron law in progressive states is that when revenue falls, taxes go up. Look out below.
The Truth Must be Told
Your contribution supports independent journalism
Please take a moment to consider this. Now, more than ever, people are reading Geller Report for news they won't get anywhere else. But advertising revenues have all but disappeared. Google Adsense is the online advertising monopoly and they have banned us. Social media giants like Facebook and Twitter have blocked and shadow-banned our accounts. But we won't put up a paywall. Because never has the free world needed independent journalism more.
Everyone who reads our reporting knows the Geller Report covers the news the media won't. We cannot do our ground-breaking report without your support. We must continue to report on the global jihad and the left's war on freedom. Our readers’ contributions make that possible.
Geller Report's independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our work is critical in the fight for freedom and because it is your fight, too.
Please contribute here.
or
Make a monthly commitment to support The Geller Report – choose the option that suits you best.
Quick note: We cannot do this without your support. Fact. Our work is made possible by you and only you. We receive no grants, government handouts, or major funding.Tech giants are shutting us down. You know this. Twitter, LinkedIn, Google Adsense, Pinterest permanently banned us. Facebook, Google search et al have shadow-banned, suspended and deleted us from your news feeds. They are disappearing us. But we are here.
Subscribe to Geller Report newsletter here— it’s free and it’s essential NOW when informed decision making and opinion is essential to America's survival. Share our posts on your social channels and with your email contacts. Fight the great fight.
Follow Pamela Geller on Gettr. I am there. click here.
Follow Pamela Geller on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social. It's open and free.
Remember, YOU make the work possible. If you can, please contribute to Geller Report.
Join The Conversation. Leave a Comment.
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spammy or unhelpful, click the - symbol under the comment to let us know. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.
If you would like to join the conversation, but don't have an account, you can sign up for one right here.
If you are having problems leaving a comment, it's likely because you are using an ad blocker, something that break ads, of course, but also breaks the comments section of our site. If you are using an ad blocker, and would like to share your thoughts, please disable your ad blocker. We look forward to seeing your comments below.
6 Comments
10 months ago
All these blue states need is more cheap labor. /s
10 months ago
Reply to
Zeus
The down voter can’t believe that his boyfriend dumped his ass for a goat.
10 months ago
More blue states will be following in their footsteps and will be losing funds as well.
D
10 months ago
LMAO!!!! And of course the libtard dumocraps destroy everything that they touch!!!!!
D
10 months ago
NY, Ca, NJ & Ill—the 4 most “mafia” controlled states in Am… Of course Seldin & Elders won…but it is not who votes who counts—it is who counts the votes—I M from Joisey—we all know Phil Murphy stole that election, 2….
10 months ago
ESCAPE from New York. . . from its taxes, crime, drugs, homeless-ness, illegals, “justice” system. . . Get-OUT while you can. . .
