Common Sense: Just say no
The number of companies expanding, moving operations back to the United States, and awarding bonuses continues to grow as a result of the GOP tax reform legislation. In addition, the financial community — which in most cases held back on what is expected to be large, possibly historically large bonuses until the lower personal income tax rates go into effect — will over the next few weeks be paying out billions of dollars beyond 2016 bonuses.
Many of these bonuses will be awarded to New York State residents or individuals who work in the state on Wall Street. This will result in a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue for New York State and a lesser degree New York City without the need to raise taxes.
This is a point that Governor Cuomo failed to take into account when he presented his dire state budget balanced on as many new taxes as he could think up. The governor also ignored the fact that many other non-financial New York companies like JetBlue and AT&T were issuing their own large special bonuses with planned New York State expansions and hirers.