ALBANY – Gov. Paterson’s tax-packed budget got slammed from both the right and the left yesterday, as one lawmaker’s study found its 137 tax-and-fee proposals would cost an average New York family $3,900 more each year.
The analysis, by Assembly Republican Leader James Tedisco, tallied the expenses that would sock a family of four – with one kid home and one in college – if the entire $4 billion tax plan becomes law.
For starters, the average family would get walloped with $1,475 in new college expenses, thanks to expanded campus fees, a $620 tuition hike, and a projected loss in state aid due to tighter eligibility requirements, the study found.
The family could face $984 increased in property taxes, after local aid and tax-rebate checks are slashed, according to the study.
Meanwhile, the family would rack up a combined $620.48 in new sales tax on all the haircuts, movie tickets, music downloads and other services.
The grand total: $3,875.48.
“That is a shot in a solar plexus for the average middle-class family in New York state,” Tedisco said.
And Dan Cantor, executive director of the liberal Working Families Party, said Paterson is “nickel-and-diming us here. We want to have a robust, thriving economy, not one that’s crimped by all these nuisance taxes.”
“I can’t tell anyone they’re wrong,” Paterson said at an event in Manhattan. “The education cuts are draconian. The health-care cuts are prohibitive. The taxes that are being levied on New York’s citizens are not fair. But when you add it all up, I think we delivered the pain pretty evenly.”
In particular, Tedisco slammed Paterson’s proposal to charge $10 to individuals who file their taxes by paper rather than online.
“Who’s that going to hurt the most – seniors and the elderly,” Tedisco said. “The worst insult? He’s actually taxing us to pay our taxes.”