New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used Tax Day to announce a new fee targeting wealthy people who still linger in the city after moving their primary residences to other states.
The tax, called pied-à-terre (or “foot on the ground”) is designed to hit people who still maintain high-value properties in the city.It is a remarkably moronic effort to ensure that wealthy people cut all ties with the city. However, Gov. Kathy Hochul has yielded to the far left andjoined the effort.
Mamdani, a socialist whosupportsthe “decommodification” of private property, is seeking major tax increases, including a 10% property tax, to fund his pledges for free buses, city-run stores, and other policies.
He will need it. Mamdani not only recently admitted that he cannot fulfill his pledge for free buses this year, but that he will only build the first of five promise city-run stores next year at the cost of $30 million —almost half of what he set aside for all five promised stores.
The new measure would add a fee to existing taxes for owners of high-value properties worth more than $5 million.
Mamdani declared the new fee part of “Happy Tax Day,” which will generate $500 million more to “help fund things like free child care, cleaner streets, and safer neighborhoods.”
He is also pushing Hochul to increase taxes on the 33,000 New Yorkers earning more than $1 million annually as well as those corporations that have not left the state. Other blue states from Washington to Virginia are moving toward similar millionaire taxes.
The move is consistent with other blue states seeing the same exodus of wealthy taxpayers and businesses due to the rising budgets and tax burdens. Rather than seeking to make their states magnets for investment, California and other states are pursuing retroactive wealth taxes and so-called “Teddy Bear laws” that refuse to recognize changes of residency.
New York has used its “Teddy Bear” regulations to declare that people who fled to other states are still residents subject to taxation because of the location of their sentimental attachments in New York (like a Teddy Bear) from pets to children.
In my new book, “Rage and the Republic,” I discuss these taxes and how they are the final stage of economic atrophy for states like New York. Politicians like Hochul cannot muster the courage to face bloated budgets, excessive union pension contracts, and runaway spending. In other words, it is too difficult to create a state that draws investment and residents like so many red states. Instead, they are chasing the remaining wealthy people who still maintain contacts with the state.
Source: ZeroHedge News
