If that president thing doesn’t work out for Andrew Cuomo, no worries: He can always do stand-up.
“Bring your business to New York,” the governor told business leaders in DC on Monday. “New York is the least expensive state to locate your business, because we’re zero taxes — no income tax, no property tax.”
That’s a real knee-slapper. Everyone knows New York’s income and property taxes are among the nation’s highest. Watchdog groups such as the Tax Foundation routinely rank the state at the bottom in terms of places to do business.
Wall Street has apparently taken the lesson. As The Post recently reported, the city’s share of US securities-industry jobs has been dropping: In the ’90s, New York boasted 30 percent of these jobs, but this year our slice dipped below 20 percent, a new low. While the nation has recouped 54 percent of securities jobs lost since the financial crisis, Wall Street got back just 23 percent. Today it employs just 167,000 workers here, versus 191,000 in 2008.
True, Cuomo’s comments about an inexpensive New York were a reference to his Start-Up New York program, which offers big tax breaks to businesses located near colleges. But that represents a tiny portion of the state economy. The governor well knows that overall we’re not even remotely competitive.
He also knows taxes are a big part of the problem. The day after he talked about how inexpensive it is to set up shop in New York, he lamented “the state’s reputation as a tax capital” and stressed the need to make New York “friendlier” for families and businesses. It’s also why he formed two separate commissions to figure out how to reform our tax system. One released its recommendations last month; the other did so Tuesday.
We hope the governor is serious about reforming New York’s tax system, which would indeed help attract business. But we’ve heard him talk this way before about the state’s high taxes. That was back in 2011 — in other words, right before he raised them.