Saying You Want to Reform the Tax Code? Easy. Doing It? Less So.

 

By Vivian Wang and Jesse McKinley 

ALBANY — It read like a maddening instruction manual for a do-it-yourself piece of furniture, with page after page of bare-bones guidance — and plenty of room for confusion.

If taxpayers and lawmakers were expecting that a new 37-page report would provide a definitive road map of how New York State might sidestep the effects of President Trump’s new federal tax plan and its sharp reduction in the deductibility of state and local taxes, they instead got a view of just how complicated this is.

The report, released this week, laid out at least a half-dozen ways New York could rewrite its tax code, with no indication of which option legislators might pursue. There was a potpourri of progressive rates, wage credits and tax-withholding schemes, with officials cautioning that all the options would require further study. No bills have been drafted.

The possibilities included completely replacing the state income tax with an employer-side payroll tax; introducing a new progressive payroll tax in addition to the existing income tax, with tax credits to make up the difference; or designing a payroll tax only for wage earners above a certain income threshold — the taxpayers most likely to be hurt by the federal tax plan in the first place. Some versions would be mandatory. Others would be opt-in.\

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Source: The New York Times (via Empire Report New York)