NY Progressive Leaders Lay Out Plan To Fight Back Against #GOPTaxScam, Raise $16B

Posted On February 6, 2018

FAIR-SHARE TAX PROPOSALS FOR NEW YORK 2018-19

We’re backing a progressive revenue package for New York that will

  • Close loopholes Congress wouldn’t close
  • Respond to new loopholes Trump and Congress opened up
  • Provide a money-back guarantee for taxpayers on job creation and pay increases by huge multinational corporations
  • Fight the opioid epidemic with a new windfall profits tax
  • Revive the stock transfer tax after Trump gave Wall Street huge tax breaks
  • Ask New York City billionaire real estate developers and condo-buyers to pay their fair share for transit and infrastructure statewide

OVER $16 BILLION IN POTENTIAL NEW REVENUE

  • CLOSE THE CARRIED INTEREST LOOPHOLE AT THE STATE LEVEL $3.5 billion per year
  • CLOSE THE NEW PASS-THROUGH LOOPHOLE AT THE STATE LEVEL Over a billion per year
  • FEDERAL TAX CUT CLAWBACK FOR CORPORATIONS THAT DON’T RAISE PAY OR CREATE JOBS:  Over a billion per year or more job creation
  • OPIOID PAINKILLER PRESCRIPTIONS & WINDFALL PROFITS TAX:  Over a billion dollars
  • STOCK TRANSFER TAX:  $5.5 billion per year
  • MULTI-MILLIONAIRES TAX:  $2.3 billion per year
  • NEW YORK CITY LUXURY LAND TAX TO FUND TRANSIT, JOBS & CLIMATE ADAPTATION:  Several billion dollars per year

CLOSE THE CARRIED INTEREST LOOPHOLE AT THE STATE LEVEL

  • Billionaire hedge fund and private equity managers on Wall Street use a special loophole to pay lower tax rates than teachers and truck drivers.
  • Congress didn’t close the loophole, even in the face of bipartisan criticism from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump.
  • A state surtax on carried interest profits equal to the amount lost to the federal loophole would raise $3.5 billion per year.

CLOSE THE NEW PASS-THROUGH LOOPHOLE AT THE STATE LEVEL

  • Billionaire real estate investors got a special loophole in the GOP Tax Scam
  • Hedge funds and private equity funds are using the loophole too — they’ll all pay lower tax rates than teachers and truck drivers
  • A state surtax on high-dollar pass-through LLCs won’t hit local small businesses — and it will raise over a billion per year

CLAW BACK THE FEDERAL TAX CUT FOR HUGE CORPORATIONS THAT DON’T RAISE PAY OR CREATE JOBS

  • Trump and the GOP Congress said their tax scam would lead to higher pay and job creation — but they didn’t put any hard demands on big companies:  they just gave them cash
  • Now multinational corporations are executing hundreds of billions of dollars in stock buybacks, just giving the cash to rich investors — not workers
  • New York should impose a “clawback” tax on publicly-traded companies that got tax breaks but don’t create jobs or raise pay
  • We won’t touch small businesses or start-ups and we’ll either raise over a billion per year or force companies to do the right thing.

ASSESS A FEE ON OPIOID PAINKILLER PRESCRIPTIONS & 

A WINDFALL PROFITS TAX ON OPIOID WEALTH

  • New York is facing a deadly public health crisis of addition and overdose, driven by prescription painkillers and other narcotics
  • Pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefits managers have abused the prescribing system to explode sales and distribution of dangerous painkillers beyond their proper use
  • A state surtax on prescription painkillers and an assessment on family fortunes built on opioids will raise billions for treatment, public health and overdose prevention.

BRING BACK THE STOCK TRANSFER TAX 

  • Big banks and Wall Street traders get the biggest benefits from the GOP Tax Scam
  • New York still collects a multi-billion dollar Stock Transfer Tax that is rebated back to the banks
  • We can leave small investors alone and impose a tiny transfer tax on high-frequency and high-dollar trades that will raise $5.5 billion per year.

MULTI-MILLIONAIRES TAX:  TAX MILLIONAIRES MORE

  • New York’s tax brackets are currently based on income distributions from the 1970s and 80s.
  • We need to adjust those brackets upward, to reflect explosive income gains by billionaires and millionaires – and big new gains from the GOP Tax Scam.
  • New progressive brackets at $5M, $10M and $100M/year would raise $2.3 billion per year.

IMPOSE A NEW YORK CITY LAND TAX TO FUND TRANSIT, JOBS & CLIMATE ADAPTATION

  • New York City real estate has soared in value, while the transportation, infrastructure, housing and energy systems that make it so valuable have suffered
  • The subways were built with a land tax on speculative real estate – now that they need to be rebuilt, it’s time for billionaire real estate moguls and huge Real Estate Investment Trusts to contribute to the rebuilding
  • We can create thousands of jobs all over New York and the with funding from a reasonable land tax on just the most valuable Manhattan office buildings and speculative luxury housing that could raise several billion dollars per year.

Read More

Right-Wing Billionaires Attack New York State

Posted On October 5, 2017

Hc ny state-constitution-0914 from strongforall

Read More

Billionaire Climate Conspiracy

Posted On August 3, 2016

Climate conspiracy from strongforall

Read More

Michael Kink/Strong Economy For All Statement on NY $15 minimum wage agreement

Posted On April 1, 2016

It’s another big victory for the Fight For $15 — a movement that started with a few courageous workers in Downtown Brooklyn less than four years ago and this week won billions for workers in California and in New York.

It’s a victory for Governor Andrew Cuomo, who demonstrated bipartisan leadership by working with lawmakers from both parties to win a $15 wage for millions of New York workers.

But the biggest victory is for workers and their families, who will finally get paychecks that will lift them out of poverty and a measure of the respect they have earned.

We’ll now work with allies and activists to fight for economic fairness for Upstate workers whose raises have been temporarily delayed by a small number of GOP Senators standing in the way of progress.

And we’ll work for fair-share tax reform to make sure New York can keep investing in the schools, jobs, housing, healthcare and antipoverty initiatives that together with today’s wage hike will lead towards broader prosperity and a stronger economy for all New Yorkers.

Read More

Strong Economy for All Coalition Statement On End-of-Session Deals

Posted On June 24, 2015

   “We fought the hedge fund billionaires hard — it looks like we beat them on the private-school tax credit, we fought them to a draw on privatized charter schools, and we definitely defended democracy over oligarchy for New York.
    Strong Economy for All members including Citizen Action of New York, the Alliance for Quality Education, New York Communities for Change and our ‘Hedge Clippers’ project partners thank Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and his Democratic Majority Conference for standing up against the billionaires on taxes and schools.
   We look forward to a continued conversation on how Albany can work for regular New Yorkers on schools, jobs and democracy in the weeks and months to come.”

Read More