Heading for a possible collision with Mayor Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said yesterday she wouldn’t rule out a surcharge next year on taxpayers earning $1 million or more.
“I don’t think a proposal of taxing people who make $200,000, $250,000 . . . makes sense for next [fiscal] year,” Quinn said at a Crain’s New York Business forum in Midtown.
“That said, the proposal that was out there to raise the personal-income level on folks who make a million or more is something I think we will have to look at come 2010.”
In March, when Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver suggested a temporary millionaires’ tax surcharge, Bloomberg criticized it.
“If you were to raise taxes on a particular group of people, their alternative is moving out of the city and taking with them all the revenues they generate, their businesses and everything else,” the mayor said at the time.
Silver abandoned his idea after it became clear the state Senate wouldn’t go along. Quinn would face the same hurdle, unless the Senate changed from Republican to Democratic control this November.
In an interview later, Quinn said she understood the potential consequences of raising taxes on the wealthy. But she warned that the gloomy economic forecast for 2010 requires that added revenue be available.
“I understand any time you raise taxes on anybody, it has an effect, and I understand people will say, ‘Won’t this happen? Won’t that happen?’ But at some point, when you get to choices, I don’t want to eliminate that as an option for folks at that level,” she said.
Kathryn Wylde of the New York City Partnership, perhaps the city’s leading business-advocacy group, wasn’t entirely dismissive.
“What she said was: Everything was on the table, if it had to be,” Wylde said.
“We’ve actually talked about trades. An increase in that tax would be preferable to some of the anti-business taxes. I think it’s worth a conversation. So I wouldn’t come out totally negative.”
Quinn’s speech before the audience of 350 business and civic leaders was her first major address since the council phantom-funds mess exploded on the front page of The Post last month.
She focused on education, saying she wants to restore $191 million cut from schools by the mayor.
After answering a half-dozen tough questions on the subject, Quinn was greeted by warm applause.