Metro

GOPer vows: No ‘rich’ tax

ALBANY — Bulletin to millionaires: You’re safe from higher state taxes — for now.

The state Senate’s majority leadership made its opposition to a millionaires tax clear yesterday as the GOP’s second in command said flatly that he won’t support restoring the tax, after having left the door open to the possibility two weeks ago.

“I am unequivocally against it,” Deputy Senate Majority Leader Thomas Libous (R-Binghamton) said on Albany’s Talk 1300 AM radio — 13 days after he had refused on the same station to rule out supporting the plan or other “out of the box” revenue raisers for his “hurting community.”

Libous had raised the prospect of voting to reinstate a millionaires tax, due to expire at the end of the year, in the event that the state doesn’t approve revenue-producing hydro-fracking for upstate natural gas.

“Thinking outside the box may include a lot of other things,” Libous said yesterday, adding, “We should stand firm” against the millionaires tax.

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-LI), Gov. Cuomo and Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb (R-Canandaigua) all oppose a proposal by Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) to continue an 8.97 percent state income-tax rate on New Yorkers with adjusted gross incomes over $1 million through 2012.

Cuomo, Skelos and Kolb also oppose extending higher rates on New Yorkers with taxable incomes over $200,000 beyond their scheduled expiration on Dec. 31. New York’s top rate is scheduled to revert to 6.85 percent next year for all taxpayers.

“Everybody is thrilled to death that we’ve been holding the line on taxes,” Libous said of constituents in his recently flood-ravaged district.

“I don’t see extension of the surcharge or the millionaires tax moving forward at all,” he said yesterday. “I don’t think we should do it.”