Mayor, City Council Agree On Revenue Boosting Tax Measures

With the city facing a huge deficit and much less Wall Street revenue, the Mayor's office and City Council have agreed on tax measures that will bring in $887 million in revenues. The NY Times reports there will not be a 5-cent plastic bag tax or sales tax on all clothing; Bloomberg and the Council "instead proposed increasing the city’s sales tax by half a percentage point, to 8.875 percent. In addition, the city would begin charging sales tax on clothing over $110. All clothing was previously exempt from such taxes." These, plus other measures, like "applying the full City Sales Tax to electric and natural gas customers that purchase energy from non-utility companies and a tax conformity package" must be approved in Albany. According to the Times, the Independent Budget Office estimates a household making $35,000/year will need to pay an additional $74 in sale taxes, while a household making $125,000/year "would pay an additional $237 a year, and one making $500,000 would pay $687 more."

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By Jen Chung in News on June 2, 2009 6:02 PM

Comments [rss]

Nyctini11

I never knew the clothing tax was taken away for all clothing? I feel like i've always paid clothing tax, i'll have to look at some receipts. I remember during shopping week, they would suspend the tax to larger purchases, but, i could swear i've continuously paid tax on clothing. Which is absurd in itself, all friends and family out of state, can't believe half the crap we have to pay tax on, thank g-d for Delaware.

grandzu

having a nj shipping address keeps paying off.

Manitoba

Correction: A family making 35K/year will pay less in taxes because they either moved out of New York or stopped buying crap they didn't need because moron pols don't have the balls to make smart decision like taxing plastic bags.

Thanks Dumbass Quinn!

See you guys at Woodbury Commons.

Bottomless Chips

I think they're growing balls by not taking the easy way out and taxing more stupid shit.

The best way to keep people poor or in the margins is to enact stupid, whimsical excise taxes.

SimonLok

If they had balls they'd actually make real cuts. Not the doomsday sh#@ that they do to make everyone except getting taxed up the a@#@, but real cuts. There are over 300k city employees with large pensions etc, plus all the other waste all of which have powerful lobbies which none of these guys want to touch, but we all get shafted for.