As you can see if you downloaded the spreadsheets attached to this post, New York’s state and local taxes continue to be sky high as a share of its residents’ personal income, and did not drop significantly as the economy recovered from the recession earlier in the decade. Only Wyoming and Alaska are in New York’s vicinity, and in these states a huge share of the taxes are paid by oil and mineral taxes, not state residents and businesses. If New York City were a separate state, it would have ranked ahead of both those states with total tax revenues at 15.9% of personal income, 46.1% over the national average, assuming the burden of New York’s state taxes is distributed in proportion to personal income. (It isn’t – the dedicated MTA taxes that are only collected downstate are included as state taxes by the Census Bureau). The state and local tax burden in the rest of the state was 23.4% higher than the national average at 13.4% of income, which would have ranked sixth (behind New York City, Wyoming, Alaska, the District of Columbia, and Maine) if the rest of the state were a separate state.
Unless you are one of the people profiteering off this situation, there are two ways to look at it. You can be outraged that the tax burden is so high in New York. Or you can be outraged that given the high tax burden in New York, we have so many unmet needs with threatened school cuts, the onrushing collapse of public housing and public transit, a shortage of public recreational facilities, and inadequate preventive health care for many. The discussion should be limited to how, and by whom, most of us are being ripped off, not whether or not.
The data in the spreadsheets doesn’t’ reflect what any one person or business has to pay, it simply reflects total tax revenues (by type) divided by the total personal income of everyone in a given state or area. New York not only has higher taxes than anyone else, but also has more tax breaks and deals than anyone else, and those who don’t have the deals – or those who have fewer deals than average – end up paying much more than the data suggests.
Those who matter more – the retired, homeowners in New York City , wealthy people whose local taxes do not increase with income in the rest of the state, non-profits where the top people are paid as much as those in for-profits, and large firms with special tax breaks may, depending on their combination of circumstances, pay no more than they would in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Connecticut, or other states with much lower tax burdens. But those who New York decides to hit hardest – new businesses, young people forced to work as “independent contractors” to find a job, renters in non-rent-regulated buildings, less well off people in the suburbs whose property taxes do no reflect their lower incomes – face far higher taxes at the same level of income.
Like most Northeastern states, Vermont and (only in the past 20 years) Massachusetts being the exception, New York has much higher local taxes than state taxes. In the “egalitarian” Northeast, the preference has been for the affluent to separate themselves into separate tax enclaves to avoid sharing resources with the rest, and shifting the tax burden to the state level would frustrate that. Thus, New York’s state tax burden at 6.8% of personal income was just slightly higher than the 6.5% U.S. average, and ranked 24th among states. The local tax burden in New York City, in contrast, was at 9.2% of personal income more than double the 4.4% national average, with local taxes in the rest of New York State high at 6.7% of income as well.
Merely refusing to share tax resources at the state level was thought insufficiently harmful to New York City, home to most of the state’s dependent poor people, so New York’s local governments are also required – virtually uniquely among states – to pay “local to state” aid for welfare and Medicaid costs. Local to state aid absorbed 1.3% of the income of New York City residents and 0.5% of the income of residents of the rest of the state, explaining that amount of the local tax burden. New York State accounted for 57% of the local to state aid in the country in FY 2006; New York City alone accounted for 38%. For categorical public assistance programs such as welfare and Medicaid, New York State accounted for 96% of the local government to state government aid in the United States and New York City accounted for 63% of the local to state aid in New York State.
The local to state for categorical assistance programs puts the state’s tax burden in context. If the State of New York were covering what are state costs everywhere else in the country, the state tax burden would be much higher – around 7.5% of personal income in FY 2006, or 15th among states. It also puts state aid to New York City in context. Total state to local aid (including federal funding passed on by state governments) averaged 3.8% of personal income nationally, compared with 5.7% of personal income from New York State to New York City and 4.4% for the rest of the state. But in the city, most of that is for social services that are state costs elsewhere (and generally federally funded). Excluding these, and deducting local to state aid, one is left with net state (and federal via state) to local assistance at 2.2% of personal income for New York City, compared with 3.1% for the rest of the state and 3.2% nationally.
The teacher’s union has been making an argument that New York’s property taxes are high outside NYC because New York State covers a lower share of public school expenditures than other states do. But that is because public school expenditures are so sky-high in New York State outside New York City, even if the higher cost of living downstate is adjusted for. Local to state aid for education averaged 2.6% of personal income nationally, compared with 2.3% of income for New York City and 3.1% of income in the rest of New York State. If spending in the rest of the state were at the national average as a share of income rather than off the charts, with state aid at the same level, the FY 2006 level of state aid would have covered 69% of it.
In New York State, all of the local to state social assistance aid is for Medicaid, as cash welfare and social services is tabulated as “local government” spending. As communities in the rest of the state age, and more people there lose health insurance, there was a chance that shifting the cost of Medicaid to the local level would be as burdensome to counties elsewhere as it is to New York City. In other words, the same decision that the rest of the state imposed to hurt New York City financially in the past when the needs were concentrated here might have helped the city in a very different future. But the state legislature has voted to have the state take over all or most of the cost of the very Medicaid services (nursing homes) and populations (Family Health Plus) that are concentrated outside New York City, forcing NYC residents to help pay.
Meanwhile, the state is keeping the local share at 25% of the total for Medicaid services (hospitals, home health care) and populations concentrated in New York City. This pattern is repeated over and over – everyone pays for spending outside the city, including those inside the city, while the city is required to pay for spending concentrated in the city on its own.
For years and years, the state would publish, in the New York State Statistical Yearbook, the share of Medicaid spending in each county paid for by federal, state and local taxes. New York City always had to pay a higher share. Some people noticed. That information has been suppressed for a decade.
Within New York State, there is a big difference in taxes by type between New York City and the rest of New York State. New York City’s local personal income tax unincorporated business tax push the total state and local income tax burden to 5.7% of income in the city, compared with 3.6% (all state) in the rest of the state and 2.4% nationally. New York City’s property taxes, on the other hand, are equal to the national average at 3.3% of personal income, and presumably lower for small homeowners (whose property tax increases are restricted but whose ability to charge higher rents to tenants is not restricted) and higher for businesses (except those with special tax breaks). New residential and commercial buildings in much of the city can also dodge property taxes for a significant amount of time before getting clobbered.
New York City benefits from the large commercial property tax base in Manhattan. This is taken into account in the state’s school aid formula, reducing the city’s share. New York City is enormously burdened by the cost of its large low-income population for services such as Medicaid. The state school aid formula does not take this into account.
Without a local income tax and with high local taxes overall, the rest if the state has a very high property tax burden at 5.1% of income. That is tied with New Jersey, and just behind the 5.3% in New Hampshire and Vermont, with the latter state collecting the majority of those revenues as the state level to even out local government services for those with differences in property wealth.
The Working Families Party has proposed increasing New York’s state income taxes, including those paid by New York City residents, to reduce the high property tax burden in the portion of the state outside New York City. City residents would continue to pay a high local income tax to keep their own property taxes down. The WFP, noting what is required to get something approved in Albany, asserts that its proposal is good policy because it would make New York City relatively worse off.
Another proposal, signed onto by a number of state legislators, would limit property taxes as a share of income outside New York City, eliminating the excess taxes rather than deferring them until the expensive property is sold (as I had proposed), and having state revenues (collected, in part, from city residents) make up the difference rather than have the rest of the state slow its ongoing massive local government spending increases.
It should be noted that taxing the rich is something I am in favor of, within limits. Unfortunately that is something we have already thought of. At 3.6% of personal income, New York state personal income tax burden alone is tied for second with California, behind only Oregon (4.4%) and just ahead of Massachusetts (3.5%). Whereas in those other states high state income taxes are associated with lower sales and local property taxes, however, New York has high taxes in all categories. We have already “taxed the rich” and everyone else got absolutely no relief as a result.
New York State’s sales taxes are at about the national average as a share of income. Lower state sales taxes, however, are combined with higher local sales taxes, helping those localities that are lucky enough to have the shopping malls. Like other taxes, New York’s tax rates tend to be higher than in other places, but its base tends to be narrower, with more special exemptions and exclusions (like expensive clothing purchased by foreign tourists who watch Sex and the City).
Although fee opponents consider New York to be fee city, fee revenues are in fact an important source of local government revenues throughout the country. They totaled 2.7% of income nationally, compared with 4.4% for local taxes. In New York City a local tax burden at 9.2% of income is combined with fee revenues of 3.0% of personal income. Not much higher even though not many localities have fee charging public housing systems, public transit systems, and public hospitals on the scale of the City of New York. This is offset by the absence of a charge for solid waste collection in New York City, relatively low water and sewer spending here, and an absence of municipally owned utility services in other categories, such as electricity.
While New York’s state level corporate income and “other” tax revenues are not much higher than the national average overall, the virtually unique local corporate income and commercial rent tax, along with a real estate transfer tax boom, push up those taxes as a share of income in New York City. New York City’s state and local total is 1.8% of income for corporate income taxes (national average 0.5%), and 1.1% of personal income for “other” taxes (national average 0.4%). While city residents didn’t have to pay those taxes in FY 2006, they may have to pay for their absence in FY 2009 and FY 2010. The collapse in real estate transactions, and in corporate profits on Wall Street, combined with locked-in spending on pensions, debts, retiree health care and Medicaid, means the city will inevitably be coming after city residents for higher taxes even as services are cut.
So back to the first question. On “how are we ripped off” – by higher taxes, or by inadequate services given high taxes, where do I stand? That is evolving.
As I’ve written previously, politics seems to be dominated by two groups of interests. The first is people and organizations who do not require public services and benefits (at least not now) and do not want to pay taxes for others to have them. The second is those who produce public services and benefits – public employee unions, government contractors, and the health care sector – who want to charge more and more for less and less, even while demanding more and more at lower prices from private sector workers when they go shopping in turn. In New York, obviously, the second group of interests has been much more successful than the first, at least collectively (individually, plenty of people and firms — or types of people and firms –avoid high taxes).
Those who require public services and benefits, however, are completely un-represented here and always end up losers. In the past, their needs have been my main focus, and I’ve advocated getting a better deal for the money we pay, rather than reducing the money we pay with so many unmet needs. Now, however, I am coming to believe it is hopeless. Younger generations cannot expect public services and benefits to meet their needs, so powerful are the producer interests in New York, so great are the debt and pension and retiree health care “obligations.” Younger generations, or at least those with the wherewithal to do so, will have to form a community outside the government and provide what ought to be public services and benefits for each other. All while paying more and more in taxes for nothing.
It’s bad enough that rich contributors to the Manhattan Institute don’t’ need or use public services and don’t want to pay. It’s bad enough when a corrupt Republican administration loads up the government with debt in total indifference to the future collapse of public services and benefits they don’t care about. What is worse is those public sector producer interests don’t rely on public services, or at least New York City public services, themselves. The political class and its supporters lives outside the city in increasing numbers, in places where the schools are better, or gets their kids into the limited number of special deal schools where an actual education is on offer. They drive to free parking by placard rather than using public transit. Their health insurance is guaranteed, and they don’t need to bother with public hospitals and clinics. And they get guaranteed pensions, while the less well off have nothing but un-guaranteed Social Security. And what is worse is that in New York State the Democratic Party, the party of government, is not only allowing the collapse of public services and benefits, it is in on the deal. Tammany Hall is all that is left of it.
It’s as if we have a buck of sand that has to be filled for our community needs to be met. They keep yelling at us to “keep the promise” and shovel in more sand, meanwhile they keep taking more and more sand out through a hole in the bottom – while cutting a deal to allow those who matter to stop shoveling.
For centuries, “liberals,” “progressives,” and others concerned with the well being of ordinary people were against taxes, and against laws, based on the assumption that government is always used by the powerful to oppress and exploit the people while providing nothing in return. Then we had a “progressive era,” when Republican progressives, recognizing that there are some things government must do, wanted to make it work better so it would cost less, and Democratic progressives wanted to make government work better so it could do more. Lots policy analysis organizations, locked into an obsolete way of thinking (or perhaps funded by public employee unions) still insist that more taxes will lead to more services and benefits and more equality, but that thinking is so early 20th century.
I’m taking to you Demos, Drum Major Institute and Fiscal Policy Institute. You can call yourself a “progressive,” but the fact that you are calling for still more taxes to get what has already been paid for many times over shows that whole idea has died. You’ll get your tax increases, on rich and poor alike, along with service cuts, benefit cuts, and more borrowing until no one is left that is stupid enough to lend, but it won’t buy what you claim. Just more pension enhancements. But some of us have faced up to the audacity of hopelessness.