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ALBANY — New York state’s business-tax climate has gone from bad to worst.
The Empire State has dropped from an already terrible 49th place to last in the nation in the latest Tax Foundation rankings, released yesterday.
New York and New Jersey swapped places in the conservative foundation’s “2013 State Business Tax Climate Index” after New Yok moved down from 48th place last year.
With New York irony, the foundation noted that Gov. Chris Christie improved New Jersey’s rank as promised — but only because the Empire State dropped.
Meanwhile, the libertarian Cato Institute gave Gov. Cuomo a “D” for his taxing and spending record in a separate report yesterday that graded the nation’s governors on fiscal policy.
Both studies faulted New York for raising the state income-tax rate on million-dollar earners to 8.82 percent this year, well above its originally scheduled 6.85 percent rate.
In its 2012 “Fiscal Policy Report Card on America’s Governors,” Cato accused Democrat Cuomo of breaking his 2011 State of the State promise to “hold the line on taxes now and reduce taxes in the future.”
Although Cuomo engineered a modest tax cut for $40,000- to $300,000-a-year earners last December, the increase on seven-figure incomes meant a net $1.9 billion more out of New Yorkers’ pockets.
“These tax hikes won’t help the New York economy, which already suffers from having the second- worst business-tax climate in the nation,” Cato said.
Cuomo spokesman Matt Wing cited the middle- class tax cut, Cuomo’s property-tax cap, and state spending increases within 2 percent — the property- tax cap’s limit.
The state also eliminated the MTA payroll tax for 700,000 small-business owners.
“No one has done more” to turn New York’s business climate around than Cuomo, said Partnership for New York City President Kathryn Wylde, a Cuomo backer.
But New York’s top small-business lobbyist said that there’s still a long way to go.
“Gov. Cuomo said two years ago that New York has no future as the tax capital of the United States, but that’s exactly what we are, and unless that changes, none of the other reforms will matter,” said Mike Durant, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business. “We’re leading the country in all the wrong categories.”
Cato credited Cuomo for holding the line on taxes and cutting benefits for new government workers.
“But much more needs to be done to reduce government spending in New York,” it concluded.
The Tax Foundation noted New York’s “moderate corporate taxes,” but said the state “scores at the bottom this year by having the worst individual income tax, the sixth-worst unemployment-insurance taxes and the sixth-worst property taxes.”
It also faulted New York for the nation’s highest cigarette tax ($4.35 per pack), an alternative minimum tax on corporations, and high local sales taxes (4.48 percent) and property taxes ($2,105 per person).