The Empire Page

Check out the analysis by Tammy Pels of the Citizens’ Budget Commission of the The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) report, Who Pays? A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States.

New York, according to ITEP, has the sixth most “progressive” tax structure in the country, which means that the higher your income the higher a share of that income goes to taxes. While the poor do particularly well in New York and the rich pay through the nose, middle income taxpayers also pay more than their counterparts in the rest of the country. In particular middle income earners pay more in personal income and property taxes.

If you think Gov. Paterson’s proposal that his budget plans include $1 billion in property tax relief will address middle income property owners tax burden, you’d better read the Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon’s analysis. He wonders if it can be done.