In a preview of her agenda for next year, Gov. Hochul this week announced a plan to tap a pool of excess sales tax revenues to fund $3 billion in checks sent to millions of New Yorkers; generally, individuals who make under $150,000 would receive $300 and families who make under $300,000 would receive $500 as long as they’d filed returns in the state.
There’s nothing wrong with applying credits to income tax returns, but color us a little underwhelmed by mailing paper checks as a populist affordability policy, one of the blunter instruments available in the governor’s arsenal.
Political figures lean a bit too heavily on this gimmick. When he was president, Donald Trump infamously got his name put on the stimulus checks that went out in 2020, strong-arming the Treasury Department days before the checks were supposed to be mailed in what seems like an ultimately successful bid to have voters believe that this was something like a personal gift from him rather than a congressionally-approved program. To this day, a number of voters believe that Trump was directly responsible and think he’ll send more.
We’re all for people getting to keep more of their hard-earned cash, but the state government should’ve perhaps just not collected those taxes in the first place, or apply a credit on a future return. We understand that these were excess sales taxes, which by their very nature are responsive to inflation, but that might be more of an indication to reform the state’s tax and spending structures than to just push money back out the door.
Mayor Adams wants to relieve people at the bottom of the earnings scale with kids from having to pay city income taxes, about $350 a year. That makes more sense than mailing those families checks for $350.
In any case, there is plenty that the cash could be spent on to bolster systems and improve lives for the people of the state. Without looking too far, if the pared-down version of the congestion pricing program that Hochul insisted on doesn’t quite cover the various transit improvements that the MTA had planned, this wouldn’t be the worst pool to draw from.
Conversely, there are many ways to save taxpayer money that have more to do with identifying waste in state spending. Essential services must be maintained and public servants should be paid decent wages. Still, no one can assert with a straight face that every dollar is getting something for the state’s taxpayers, even when it’s going towards functions that are generally worth it.
So if the governor wants to pour some political capital — and she will have to spend it, given that such an effort would require legislative approval in the rigamarole that is the state’s annual budget process — into a plan that will help New York families, there are several avenues to do so that aren’t just a single $500 check, as much as that might make a difference in some families’ lives.
If this ends up as some point of a larger package of tax and budget reforms, then so be it, but we’ll be waiting eagerly for the rest of it. Everyone loves getting a check in the mail, but this is the candy of affordability policy. We need the meat and vegetables most of all.
